Dementia Grief Quotes

There are all sorts of losses people suffer - from the small to the large. You can lose your keys, your glasses, your virginity. You can lose your head, you can lose your heart, you can lose your mind. You can relinquish your home to move into assisted living, or have a child move overseas, or see a spouse vanish into dementia. Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.

There are all sorts of losses people suffer—from the small to the large. You can lose your keys, your glasses, your virginity. You can lose your head, you can lose your heart, you can lose your mind. You can relinquish your home to move into assisted living, or have a child move overseas, or see a spouse vanish into dementia. Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.

I think about how the language I’ve mourned never learning has on some levels already been taught. A language I thought too difficult to warrant effort has already embedded itself into me.

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.

There are all sorts of losses people suffer- from the small to the large. You can lose your car keys, your glasses, your virginity. You can lose your head, you can lose your heart, you can lose your mind. You can relinquish your home to move into assisted living, or have a child move overseas, or see a spouse vanish into dementia. Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.

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.

If I’d realised how much that pressure would build inside me, the slow descent into a dull existence, days blemished with concern for my dad and whether I’m looking after him properly — well, I would have stayed out late some nights, lost my virginity at sixteen instead of still having it, developed a fondness for alcohol, sat at bars, smoked weed, danced at clubs, and turned strangers into friends.

Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.

I believe that when a loved one has dementia, you experience many layers of grief. The first wave of grief comes with the diagnosis. The realisation that the person who has supported you all your life, will no longer be able to do so, no matter how hard they try. Grief the first time they struggle to remember your name or your relationship to each other. Grief when you have to accept that you can no longer keep them at home. Grief as they lose the ability to communicate, as another piece of the jigsaw is lost. Grief every time they are afraid, agitated or confused. So much grief you don't think you can cope with anymore. And then the overwhelming tidal wave of grief when they pass, when you would give anything to go back to the first wave of grief.

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.

Sorrow and grief become constant companions as we experience losses both big and small. Dementia has been called “the long goodbye” for a reason. Anticipatory grief is also a part of the caregiver’s journey. We know how the story ends from the day we hear a dementia diagnosis. We try not to dwell on our loved one’s demise, but that reality bubbles just below the surface of our everyday lives.

The losses caused by dementia aren’t as clear as a loss by death. When someone dies, we know when it happened. We know how it happened. We take part in certain rituals to mark the event. Our sorrow is understood by others who offer condolences and support. Those things don’t happen with the slow but inevitable losses of dementia. What we experience is called ambiguous loss. Ambiguous loss and the subsequent grief can come from two scenarios. Either someone is physically absent but emotionally present or they’re physically present but emotionally absent. They’re here, but they aren’t here.

There's an anticipated, ambiguous grief; a premature mourning of the self, or of the beloved other. During dementia's last stages, a beloved person may be there and yet absent, a powerful reminder of the self's loss.

They don't want to see me lose my home. They want me to come to my senses before it's too late. I need a better way to cope with my feelings of loss and guilt. I need bereavement therapy. Here are some names. I should think about medication. Here's what worked for them. There are books. There are websites. There are support groups. Healing won't come from withdrawing into a fantasy world, isolating myself, spending all my time with a dog. There is such a thing as pathological grief. There is the magical thinking of pathological grief, which is a kind of dementia. Which in their collective opinion is what I have.