July 31, 2025
Dear Dementia,
We have entered the final day with my final letter to you. Though this little experiment of mine is over, the work is far from over.
I often listen to music while I work. Instrumental, sometimes sweeping orchestral, sometimes simple piano. This morning, as I was working on the development of a Life Enrichment program for a client, a version of The Impossible Dream started to play. This song, from La Man of La Mancha has long been a family staple. Loaded with meaning, emotions, and memories. As it played, though an instrumental version, my mind was screaming the lyrics. Aside from any personal connection, I was thinking about how you bring people to dream the impossible dream.
For some, the impossible dream is a cure. For others it is that you stabilize and the most painful parts of this journey are minimized. And, for most, it is that you never arrive. Regardless of our desire to cure you, prevent you, or live the best we can with you, we are all dreaming the impossible dream. We are fighting all that the world, and you, throws at us, and all that seems to be against us at every turn. Through it all we don’t give up, we don’t lose hope, we continue to march on. Even if that thing we are fighting is a windmill in the distance, we fight on. We may not conquer you, dear dementia, but we have it within us to conquer the suffering and trials that you bring. We continue to love the people before us, to keep our gaze forward with courage, with a prayer for heaven.
We are more resilient than most give us credit for, and maybe even more than we give ourselves credit for in this moment.
So this is it Dementia, my final letter. The experiment is over, yet the quest rages on.
Until we meet again,
Kate
