The old king is the author's aging father, and his exile is Alzheimer's disease—the illness that seized him in his final years.
Conventional wisdom holds that Alzheimer's inevitably severs the ties between the sick person and everyone around them. But Geiger discovers something else: this illness becomes his last, best chance to truly know his father. "Since my father can no longer cross the bridge to my world," he writes, "I must cross it to reach his." Through a narrative that is moving, intense, and often funny, Geiger traces his family's history—the tensions between its members, the reasons things unfolded as they did—and discovers in this journey an authentic, profound connection with his father. The father's new way of seeing life emerges, viewed from an unexpected angle. His words, sometimes disconnected from context, reveal a strange new wisdom and expose the tenderness that was always there.
"Alzheimer's brought my father no advantage, certainly. But for his children and grandchildren it became, in different ways, an education. In the end, a parent's job is to teach something to their children.
Old age as the final stage of life is a form of culture that keeps changing and must be learned anew each time.
When a father has nothing left to teach his children, he can still teach them what it means to grow old and ill. The father-son relationship can mean that too, when things go well. Because the only way to triumph over death is to do it while you're still alive."
R.M., 2012