How many times have promises been made by people who have no way of knowing what it is they promise? Oaths are sworn based on the abstract idea that love and discipline can win out over age and disease. Sometimes love and discipline do. But more often than not, the promises end up being ropes, the same ropes that guilt uses to lasso families into bad choices and decades of pain. Dementia is the worst of all—a disease that seems to feed on promises and guilt. When you find dementia, you find a family haunted by the impossible choices before them.
