Our Long Goodbye

A Daughter, a Father, a Best Friend, and the Journey Through Alzheimer's

Published by She Writes Press
Distributed by Simon & Schuster

About The Book

In this deeply emotional memoir, a grieving daughter bonds with her father’s best friend of eighty years—and reconnects with her father—through the stories her unlikely new friend shares with her.

From the moment Teri Drobnick’s father is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, she feels like he’s slipping away. As she grapples with an uncertain future and the steady erosion of his memory, Teri leans on Uncle Bob—her dad’s best friend of eighty years.

As Teri navigates the emotional limbo of caring for a parent with dementia, she and Uncle Bob, united by mutual grief, form a deeper bond from the stories he shares of his lifelong friendship with her father. Beginning with their boyhood during World War II, Uncle Bob recounts first dates, college at UC Berkeley, marriages, building a business, raising children, surviving loss. In the present, Teri confronts the anger, loneliness, and role reversal that accompany memory decline—but through tales of the past, she finds a way to reconnect with her father.

With a narrative braided between past and present, Our Long Goodbye is a poignant love letter from a daughter to her father that explores anticipatory grief, enduring friendship, and the profound power of shared memory.

About The Author

Teri Roche Drobnick worked in the medical field as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and now writes full time. Since losing her father to Alzheimer’s, she has worked as a volunteer community educator for the Alzheimer’s Association. She is the author of a children’s book, Moving Day, which Publishers Weekly called “charming, entertaining, and full of heart.” When Teri’s not writing, she can be found hiking or rowing on the Petaluma River. Raised in Lafayette, CA, she has two grown daughters and currently resides in Petaluma, CA, with her husband and her best friend, Hobie, a Goldendoodle.

Product Details

  • Publisher: She Writes Press (November 3, 2026)
  • Length: 256 pages
  • ISBN13: 9798896361978

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Raves and Reviews

“With deep respect and a daughter's devotion, Drobnick explores the delicate power of memory and the friendships that shape us. Ultimately, her snapshots in time create a beautiful mosaic of anticipatory grief and unbreakable bonds.”—Samantha Rose, author of Giving Up the Ghost: A Daughter's Memoir

Our Long Goodbye is a poignant, vulnerable, and at times heartbreaking story of how dementia leaves an indelible mark on our lives. Through the story of her dad’s life, Drobnick uncovers the power of dementia to simultaneously bring people together in ways we could have never imagined while also fundamentally changing the nature of those relationships. A universally resonant contribution to our understanding of what it means to be a resilient human.”—Kaitlin Casaletto, PhD, ABPP-CN, associate professor in the department of neurology at the Memory and Aging Center, UCSF
 
“With interweaving chapters that tell the harrowing story of a father's descent into Alzheimer’s, this is a tender portrait of enduring relationships. Drobnick is both a loving daughter and a brave writer, tending to her father both in life and in the pages of this beautiful book.”—Monica Wesolowska, author of Holding Sivan
 
“A beautifully written tribute that captures both the heartbreak of Alzheimer’s and the enduring power of love, friendship, and family. An absolute treasure.”—Cherie Kephart, author of A Few Minor Adjustments
 
“Told through Teri’s tender, observant eyes, this is a story about the true meaning of devotion: the agonizing pain of watching a mind disappear, the fierce beauty of a friendship that refuses to surrender, and the heartbreaking realization that love transcends memory.”—Mona Halaby, author of In My Mother’s Footsteps: A Palestinian Refugee Returns
 
“What a lovely, heartwarming story of two friends in sickness and in health. The importance of friends like Bob in the lives of persons like Bobby, suffering from dementia, cannot be underestimated. Bobby’s daughter brings the story of their friendship to life with warmth and tenderness.”—Gayatri Devi, MD, MS, FAAN, clinical professor of neurology at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell and director of Park Avenue Neurology
 
“In Our Long Goodbye, Drobnick tells the story of her father, from his earliest years to his death from Alzheimer’s in his late eighties. Through it all, Bobby emerges as an individual whose life was lived in the fullest, even though Alzheimer’s disease took much of it from him. The power  and benefits of telling the story of one life are vivid and palpable. Alzheimer’s may end a life, but it cannot erase the memory of who the person was and is.”—Peter V. Rabins, MD, MPH, professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, coauthor of The 36-Hour Day, and author of Is It Alzheimer’s?
 
“Like Drobnick’s, my father remained loving and became childlike in the throes of Alzheimer’s. Our Long Goodbye brought me right back to the days of sitting and simply holding his hand, of hoping he would remember my name, of loving the person who still inhabited my father’s body but wasn’t my ‘dad’ any longer. This memoir is a well-written, artfully rendered, and deeply personal story of family and a friendship that transcended long years and staggering challenges. It touched my heart with every page turned—it will touch yours too.”—D. J. Green, author of No More Empty Spaces

“This tender and moving memoir celebrates a father’s rich life and his compelling legacy. Teri documents her dad’s remarkable lifelong friendship with his best friend while also skillfully describing the sorrow, confusion, growth, and deepened connections she experiences as she shepherds him through Alzheimer’s. Her memoir is a testament to friendship and devotion that both inspires and informs.”—Deborah Shouse, author of Love in the Land of Dementia

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