July 27, 2025
Dear Dementia,
Twenty years ago today was my grandfather’s funeral. He didn’t have you in his life, but there were other illnesses, trials, and suffering. You are not the only pain someone will have in their life, but you are one of the strongest. My grandfather’s funeral occurred less than two weeks after my grandmother’s diagnosis with you, and that day marked a before and after in my life like no other event ever has or likely ever will.
It was a moment when I realized that the life I knew was lost to time. Little did I know how it would still be hovering 20 years later. So many families feel this strangeness in their lives after you enter. You create a before and after that is intensified by other life occurrences, or seen as a matter of fact. You require us to see life in a new way, to experience moments using a different lens to view our surroundings. I had many things collide in my life during this time, it was not simply your entrance, but your entrance suddenly became a fear. A fear that my other grandmother, might find you some day. A fear that my family of 4 might be left alone to take care of my grandmother, both maternal and paternal by ourselves. That fear become a reality in many ways, but not how I thought it might.
Fear can be a fire that strengthens a family, forged by the journey or a fire that melts a family that never was meant to be a clan. I have worked with both types of families over the years. The stories I now carry because of the fear others experience outnumbers the fingers and toes I possess. I hope I am doing all I can to support the families that are melting, and stand strong with the families being forged in the fire of your journey.
Until tomorrow,
Kate
