Alzheimer's Grief Quotes

It's like you don't get that she's not gone yet, like you think her time left isn't meaningful anymore. You're acting like a selfish child.

I miss myself." "I miss you too, Ali, so much." "I never planned to get like this." "I know.

And sometimes when she does remember, she calls me her little angel and she knows where she is and everything is all right for a second or a minute and then we cry; she for the life that she lost I for the woman I only know about through the stories of her children.

Offering care means being a companion, not a superior. It doesn’t matter whether the person we are caring for is experiencing cancer, the flu, dementia, or grief. If you are a doctor or surgeon, your expertise and knowledge comes from a superior position. But when our role is to be providers of care, we should be there as equals.

I am a wife, mother, and friend, and soon to be grandmother, I still feel, understand, and am worthy of the love and joy in those relationships. I am still an active participant in society. My brain no longer works well, but I use my ears for unconditional listening, my shoulders for crying on, and my arms for hugging others with dementia. Through an early stage support group...by talking to you today, I am helping others with dementia live better with dementia. I am not someone dying. I am someone living with Alzheimer's. I want to do that as well as I possibly can.

She could always walk somewhere without him. Of course this somewhere had to be somewhere "safe." She could walk to her office. But she didn't want to go to her office. She felt bored, ignored, and alienated in her office. She felt ridiculous there. She didn't belong there anymore. In all the expansive grandeur that was Harvard, there wasn't room there for a cognitive psychology professor with a broken cognitive psyche.

Death is a muscle memory that one never forgets.

Nobody warned me about this part. When I envisioned my trip, I imagined exciting adventures, exotic locales, a jet-set lifestyle. I never thought grief and doubt would climb into my backpack and come with me. I pictured standing at the top of the Sun Gate, looking down at Machu Picchu, without ever thinking about the steps it would take to get there. This is the curse of wanderlust, when the postcard image becomes a brutal reality.

remembered how my grandfather had been after my parents died. The way he would look around vaguely, ask for our mother, and Hel would say gently, “Mum’s dead, remember, Grandad? She and Dad died two years ago.” And then three years ago. And then four. And every time, he would react with the same grief, his face crumpling, his blue eyes filling with unexpected tears. The shock wore off a little as the years passed—as if the knowledge had lodged in there somewhere, in spite of his Alzheimer’s—but the grief… the grief never lessened.

My life changed in a single moment and became two distinct segments, before October 2018 and after. Alzheimer’s permeates every facet of my life.

When someone you love has dementia, you too experience a form of anticipatory grief, but yours may extend over a longer period of time (for some, as long as 20 years) and be socially unrecognized and surrounded by uncertainty.

I didn’t understand grief. I thought grief was something that happened when someone you love dies, not when they are still alive.

I’m bound together now in both sadness and hope. I feel grief every day, even if it’s a whisper in the background of my thoughts.

As my life changed in that non-descript doctor’s office, everything around me remained the same. It was as if everyone around me was living in color, and somehow, my world had turned black and white.

I went through all of the five stages of grief.

When dealing with Alzheimer's, the grieving process is ongoing. It repeats itself over and over again. Just when you've come to accept a loss, you experience a new loss and the grieving process begins again. When a loved one has Alzheimer's, you lose a little bit of more of that person each day. You are constantly losing, grieving, and accepting. Some losses hit you harder than others, but you are constantly repeating the stages of grief regardless of the significance of the loss.