“Ed’s and my life began to unravel in the fall of 2019.” With those opening words, Claire Blatchford of Shelburne Falls pulls the reader quickly and forcefully into “Unraveling > Reweaving,” a memoir published by Lorian Press that recounts the final few months of her husband Ed’s life.

Ed Blatchford died of COVID-19 in April 2020 after a 12-year struggle with Parkinson’s Disease.

His widow stresses in her book that everyone’s experience of Parkinson’s is different, just as every family’s way of dealing with a loved one’s decline and death is different.

Nevertheless, any of us who have nursed family members through the final months of their lives will recognize that feeling of unraveling. Suddenly, strategies that have worked and relationships that have coasted along no longer suffice.

It’s a time of life that requires flexibility from all concerned. Unfortunately, the person who is dying can’t always be flexible so his or her family has to become even more so.

Claire Blatchford matter-of-factly goes through the stages of her husband’s final decline. Her story rightly concentrates on the relationship between Ed and his family, particularly his wife.

She deftly demonstrates the ways in which that relationship endured despite his physical and mental decline. In his last few months, her husband went from walking on his own to using a walker and then a wheelchair.

His confusion increased as he faced various caregiving situations, including being placed in a nursing home after a fall and in a psychiatric unit after a particularly disoriented episode.

Her recounting of not being able to see him when he was in these institutions because of the pandemic shares her sadness but also her ways of keeping in touch. Blatchford and her children reached out to Ed as best they could.

When her husband was in the nursing home, she and her dog wrapped themselves up (March in New England can be hostile) and sat outside his window to remind him that they were always present in his life.

“Unraveling > Reweaving” shares not just the facts of Ed’s final illness but also the emotions it evoked in his wife and family.

Claire Blatchford describes a number of strategies, including prayer and meditation, she used to maintain her emotional and psychic connection with her husband, even when he was physically absent.

That connection clearly sustained both of them and lasted beyond his death, accomplishing the final reweaving of the title.

Brief yet unsparing, this beautifully written memoir speaks not just of illness and death but of the essence of life.

Tinky Weisblat is the award-winning author of “Love, Laughter, and Rhubarb.” Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.