July 1, 2025
Dear Dementia,
Back on July 1, 2005, little did I know what I was looking at to pursue professionally would become personal in a matter of a few short days. We knew something was off with Grandma, but we didn’t know it was you. With the persecutive that only distance can bring, I have come to appreciate you and hate you. I have come to thank you and curse you. Well, to be fair I don’t hate you or curse you, but I do hate and curse the ways you changed relationships in my family. I may tell you more about them as the days go by, but for now, I want to try to think more clearly about how you change me. We know how you changed my world, but how did you change me?
Before you came along, I knew you in theory, at the level only granted to someone living in the mid-2000s as a 16 year old. I knew you as both trouble and to be playful. I knew you to bring great sorrow and fear, but also laughter and repair. The depths of which I only fully understood later in life.
20 years ago you were simply a theory. You were not personal, yet you grabbed my focus in way that made my schooling both challenging and unique. All I ever wanted to research or write about was you. Yet, with the limited resources of my high school library, my papers never made top grade. I struggled to find research on how music therapy, art therapy, and drama therapy interacted with you, supported you, and transformed you. I struggled to find hard evidence as to how my Catholic faith could make your journey a little less burdensome. My teachers didn’t understand this near obsession with you, nor did they seem to care. Especially my psychology teacher!
I knew at 11, I was going to dedicate some, if not all, of my professional life accompanying you. A fact that causes some look at me with great doubt in their eyes when I share this piece of me, the same way my teachers did back then. My knowing I would work with you was cast aside as a youthful dream, and later on as a 20-something’s crazy ambition that will one day wear off. But that is a story for another time. We knew the truth. God knew.
In the summer of 2005, I had yet to tell a story of dementia, to learn all of your characters and the many roles you play. I had yet to visit my grandmother knowing you were with her. I hope that didn’t change how I approached her that very first time.
Anyway, I long to discover, with the lens of some time, the role you played in my life. Our journey together in so many ways has just begun. 25 years ago you kicked down my door. 20 years ago you took a seat at the dinner table. I still don’t know how I feel about all of this, but let’s take these 31 days to figure this out. I have assisted countless people in writing letters to you over these last 10 years. I guess now it is my turn.
Until tomorrow,
Kate
