A Vignette

Connie says she is losing it and she is scared. So am I. Week by week it becomes more clear where we are going and neither of us wants to go….

“I’M LOSING IT.”

She said with a look that combined fear, loss, grief and confusion. She looked at me with eyes I have looked into for 57 years.

“I know, and I am losing you,” I thought but did not say.

What can you say? When you start on this journey with dementia you know where it is going. There are no off ramps. You just don’t know when that final day will come when someone you love looks at you and sees a stranger while you look at them and see the person you have shared so much with and love just as much as you did first did all those years ago.

We are not there yet. She knows me, our kids, friends. But it was a rough day. It started with a semi-seizure, suspected to be a reaction to a new med. It ended with tears and a hug and “I’m losing it.”

“And I am losing you and I am afraid,” I said. We both know what is happening.

Over the past few weeks she has quit making phone calls, quit doing texts. She can’t handle the phone anymore. I have to be there with her if she wants to talk with someone and even then, the calls are brief. 

Ever since we started down this dirt road she has been keeping a journal so she can look back and see where she’s been. Now, if you ask how the day goes, she has to look at her journal, scrawled in shrunken handwriting only she can read.

Tonight she wanted the TV off. She is struggling to understand her favorite shows, so we watch a lot of HGTV. She wanted to write in her journal. She stood over the desk, pen in hand then looked up at me.

“I don’t think I can do this anymore.” I hugged her. It’s become my answer to everything, it seems. Hugging her, stroking her hair. Telling her I love her. 

Dementia is a series of plateaus, each one lower than the previous one and the plateaus are becoming smaller and the drops more severe. There is a valley below and we can see it but neither of us wants to go there quite yet.

She lies down. I kiss her, tell her I love her and I leave and stand outside in the chill of the night and I cry.

So it goes.

Rich Heiland, has been a reporter, editor, publisher/general manager at daily papers in Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio and New Hampshire. He was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team at the Xenia Daily (OH) Daily Gazette, a National Newspaper Association Columnist of the Year. Since 1995 he has operated an international consulting, public speaking and training business specializing in customer service, general management, leadership and staff development with major corporations, organizations, and government. Semi-retired, he and his wife, Connie, live in West Chester, PA. He can be reached at [email protected].