This is a beautiful poem about caring for and loving someone with dementia. I saw it on the “Esquina Poetica” (Poet’s Corner) Facebook page.
Excerpt:
[It] is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be.
It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honor what emerges along the way.
Check out the full poem below.
Robin
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Poet’s Corner / Esquina Poetica
July 9, 2022
Posted by:
Heidi Priebe
Maxine Noel, Soulmates
To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be.
The people they’re too exhausted to be any longer.
The people they don’t recognize inside themselves anymore.
The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into.
We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back when it burns out; to become speedily found when they are lost.
But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be.
It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honor what emerges along the way.
Sometimes it will be an even more luminescent flame.
Sometimes it will be a flicker that disappears and temporarily floods the room with a perfect and necessary darkness.
In late June 2022, CurePSP (curepsp.org) hosted a webinar on “Managing Swallowing Changes in PSP, CBD, and MSA” with Stanford speech language pathologist (SLP) Julie Hicks. Her presentation provided general information about working with an SLP, what a swallowing evaluation looks like, and what treatment might involve. In the question-and-answer period, Julie Hicks addresses when to see an SLP, the use of feeding tubes, practical tips families can use to help people slow down and control impulsivity while eating, and how to find an SLP with experience treating those with parkinsonism disorders.
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