The Longest Day

Today I am taking part in a challenge to support a friend's father that suffered from Alzheimer's as well as honor one of my favorite authors of all time that also dealt with the disease. Terry Pratchet was loved the world over and I have a personal goal to not only collect the entire Discworld series but also find at least one autographed book by him. He passed in recent years after a long battle with Alzheimer's and the writing world took to social media to express our collective sorrow.

It was through those conversations I learned that one of my good friends and an author I look up to in every way had also understood the pain and frustrations of the disease in a deeper way because her father had suffered as well. She created The Longest Day challenge in honor of Sir Pratchet but also for her personal story to help raise money and awareness. I joined in last year to help write in Terry Pratechet's memory and this year we are writing again, this time about memories.

I have not decided on the memory I want to share but I know I will take part because I believe it is important to keep memories alive and to remind people that there are those out there fighting just to hold on to the simple things like names. I think I will be going through some of my photo albums to find just the right story to tell and in honor of Father's Day being yesterday I will do my best to find one to share about my own dad that I lost almost nine years ago.

I have been reminiscing recently and I think that it would be a nice touch to be able to share with the world some of those things that bring a smile to my face. I would like to challenge each one of the people that read my blog posts to consider sharing a memory of your own. It does not matter if you are a writer or a handyman, just take a few minutes and write down some thoughts on a memory that is important to you. Use the hashtag #LongestDay or #EndAlz on social media and together we can fill the world with memories in honor of those that struggle to keep their own.

You can feel free to tag or post to me Renee Jean on Facebook or send them to me @AuthorReneeJean on twitter! Please help us fill the world with memories and smiles today so we can show that we stand with those still fighting.