A corporate crisis manager takes Alzheimer’s head-on, as if managing the logistics of an oil spill, when he embarks on a bold mission to re-boot his mother’s and aunt’s fading minds by taking them around the globe to re-enact and relive seminal moments that shaped their lives.
The Pulse Of Life
Eric Steven Stahl has never met a problem he couldn’t solve. As the consummate P.R. disaster spinner and student of human behavior, he has even formulated a list of 10 CRISIS MANAGEMENT rules for handling any catastrophe from oil spills to auto recalls. So when his irascible 88-year-old mother, Miriam, and 100-year-old Aunt Betty start showing disturbing signs of Alzheimer’s, he’s determined to battle the disease, that decimated all of his mother’s and aunt's siblings, in the only way he knows: head-on and in complete control. Against the advice of everyone around him, Eric takes the two aging women and his resistant wife, Nana, on an expedition of a lifetime across 11 countries and three continents to re-enact and relive key seminal moments that shaped his mother’s and aunt’s lives in hopes of re-booting their fading minds.
His well thought out plan is quickly upended, however, not only by their diminishing mental capacity, but dizzying logistics, marital strife and an unexpected cataclysmic sibling rivalry between the two sisters.
Set against the backdrop of some of Europe’s most iconic capitals, Eric trudges forward, undaunted, in the face of overwhelming adversity, even savoring small victories along the way as the two sisters exhibit some moments of clarity and joy.
But the harsh reality of the mission finally sets in, when traveling through frigid Russia, after weeks on the road, Eric finally shows signs of “fuselage fatigue” and the weight of a crisis without a solution drives even him, crisis management PRO, right to the edge.
From a near catastrophe to a true epiphany, Eric slowly relinquishes some of that overriding control, that is such a part of his DNA, only to witness a miracle of sorts between all the members of his memory expedition… discovering that the very disease that almost tore them apart, actually brings them all together.
