Colleen Mellor is a former Cranston teacher of 30 years, a former realtor of nine years, a Providence Journal columnist, an author of multiple books and a Warwick resident since the ’90s. She has also been sole caregiver to her husband, who has Alzheimer’s disease, for over 10 years.

A single mom, widowed twice and divorced once by 42, Mellor met her husband Paul, a long haul trucker, a few years later. The two moved to Asheville, North Carolina, where four years later, he met with an accident — a collision with a 12-year-old girl driving a truck. Mellor’s husband made a full physical recovery, but she noticed an increase in symptoms of cognitive decline, which she’d already begun seeing before his accident.

Over the next decade and more, Mellor has tackled challenges with her own health in addition to caring for her husband. Recently, she decided to put everything she learned into a book.

Mellor will give a talk on her book, “Az and Me: A Partner’s Journey with Alzheimer’s” at an event hosted by the Cranston Senior Center’s “Make Our Community Dementia Friendly Initiative” on Sep. 24. The book alternates between helpful anecdotes for caregivers and Mellor’s reflective poems about her experience.

“I found out how desperate one can be with that situation,” Mellor said. “But I managed to accomplish the maze of things.”

While taking care of her husband, Mellor suffered a herniated disc along with a severe cold and complications from medication. She lost 30 pounds over three months of illness, and decided to find her husband a facility — “the wrong facility,” she later realized. The couple spent thousands of dollars on care despite being eligible for a better facility covered by veterans’ benefits.

Mellor has since made it her objective to educate other caregivers, as well as those with Alzheimer’s, on how to optimize their care.

“‘Az and Me’ is my opus. That is my mission. It is my mission because it’s everything I learned, in this process of 10-plus years,” she said.

Because caregivers don’t always have the time or patience to focus on long reads, Mellor said, she’s tried to keep her writing short and snappy as she reflects on her life with her husband. Each chapter is around three pages, and poems break up chunks of text.

Mellor wrote her poem “The Nice Lady” about how her neighbors consider her a “nice lady,” but sometimes she’s unable to do “some things like normal people do.” For instance, when she tried to clean out her garden house, her husband would bring everything back in.

“Then you go and stomp around the yard swearing because you just have to keep repeating things,” she said.

Mellor hopes caregivers can find comfort in her writing and often makes observations about her own behavior. Caregivers tend to “fear financial disaster, do some things without knowing why and try to instruct those in their care when they have no capacity to be instructed,” she said.

“I devised ways that would allow for the fact that caregivers are exhausted, they want practical, they want fast, and if you can wrap humor in it — that’s even better,” she said.

Despite being together for 33 years, Mellor and her husband only got married last December. Though he had proposed more than once before, she was reluctant to make him a member of her family, fearing that tragedy would befall him: in addition to the loss of her previous partners, two of Mellor’s brothers and her father all died of Alzheimer’s.

“[My book] is a love story. It’s my commitment to my husband,” Mellor said.

Mellor encouraged those 50 years and up to attend the talk, calling them “the next era of caregivers.” Her presentation will aim to be “lively” and “interesting,” exploring her background before launching into a punchy summary of the book. She hopes to give similar talks across the state.

The Cranston Senior Center initially designed their “Make our Community Dementia Friendly” initiative for a Tufts Health Grant Foundation proposal. After receiving $20,000 in funds, the senior center focused their efforts on community outreach regarding dementia and memory loss, said David Quiroa, assistant director of the center.

The initiative’s outreach includes sharing the 10 signs of dementia as well as financial and medical resources Rhode Islanders can take advantage of if they or their family member is experiencing memory loss. It also includes signature events like Mellor’s book talk.

At the event, representatives from the senior center will present about their program and introduce their community partners, including the Alzheimer’s Association of Rhode Island, Butler Hospital, Blue Cross and more. Attendees will have the opportunity to collect resource materials from these partners before Mellor begins her talk. After the talk, the center will conduct a Q&A with Mellor.

“Az and Me” is available for purchase on Amazon, where it has an average rating of five stars. According to Mellor, prospective caregivers appreciate the advice she couches in short anecdotes — like tips for finding a residential home, the importance of assigning roles so caregivers don’t take on too much and how to identify a support system.

“The role of the caregiver, it’s like somebody says tag, you’re it,” Mellor said. “I wanna give them hope.”

The presentation will be held at the Cranston Public Library on Sockanosset Cross Road at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 24.