Alzheimer S Quotes

“You're so beautiful," said Alice. "I'm afraid of looking at you and not knowing who you are."
"I think that even if you don't know who I am someday, you'll still know that I love you."
"What if I see you, and I don't know that you're my daughter, and I don't know that you love me?"
"Then, I'll tell you that I do, and you'll believe me.”
― Lisa Genova, Still Alice

“Every time I read to her, it was like I was courting her, because sometimes, just sometimes, she would fall in love with me again, just like she had a long time ago. And that's the most wonderful feeling in the world. How many people are ever given that chance? To have someone you love fall in love with you over and over?”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Wedding

“Affirmations are our mental vitamins, providing the supplementary positive thoughts we need to balance the barrage of negative events and thoughts we experience daily.”
― Tia Walker, The Inspired Caregiver: Finding Joy While Caring for Those You Love

“She is leaving him, not all at once, which would be painful enough, but in a wrenching succession of separations. One moment she is here, and then she is gone again, and each journey takes her a little farther from his reach. He cannot follow her, and he wonders where she goes when she leaves.”
― Debra Dean, The Madonnas of Leningrad

“Not all activities are equal in this regard. Those that involve genuine concentration—studying a musical instrument, playing board games, reading, and dancing—are associated with a lower risk for dementia. Dancing, which requires learning new moves, is both physically and mentally challenging and requires much concentration. Less intense activities, such as bowling, babysitting, and golfing, are not associated with a reduced incidence of Alzheimer’s. (254)”
― Norman Doidge

“Thin, I think, that fabric between realities. Maybe minds aren't lost. Maybe they just slip through and find a different place to wander.”
― C.J. Tudor, The Chalk Man: A Novel

“Her purse was a weight, ballast; it tethered her to the earth as her mind floated away.”
― Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

“Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.”
― William Shakespeare, Love Poems and Sonnets

“Then he stared down at the twinkling lights and sobbed, "All my stars fell out of the sky.”
― Belinda Bauer, The Beautiful Dead

“Do whatever you have to, to keep yourself reading.”
― Richard Restak, The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind

“This disease will not be bargained with. I can’t offer it the names of the United States presidents in exchange for the names of my children. I can’t give it the names of the state capitals and keep the memories of my husband.”
― Lisa Genova, Still Alice

“I don't regret any of the treatments we tried or the care-giving I did. My only regret is that I wasn't able to cure him.”
― Sonia Discher, Dealing with Early Onset Alzheimer's: Love, Laughter & Tears

“But we can't do anything about getting older. If we live long enough, is forgetting due to Alzheimer's our brain's destiny? For most of us, it is not. Alzheimer's is not a part of normal aging. Only 2% of people with Alzheimer's have the purely inherited early-onset form of the disease. 98% of the time, Alzheimer's is caused by a combination of the genes we inherited and how we live. While we can't do anything about our DNA, science clearly shows that the way we live can dramatically affect the accumulation of amyloid plaques. This in turn means that, like cancer and heart disease, there are things we can do to prevent Alzheimer's.”
― Lisa Genova, Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting

“I pushed him because I knew that something was wrong and he turned to me and said, “I don’t like being like this.”
― Sonia Discher, Dealing with Early-Onset Alzheimer's: Love, Laughter & Tears

“You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu”
― Naomi Wark

“Minimize the fear of caring for someone with dementia, and preserve the caregiver’s sanity with personal, functional tips to understand and cope with the disease.”
― Sonia Discher, Dealing with Early Onset Alzheimer's: Love, Laughter & Tears

“I’m here to ask you to fight for more funding for research on Alzheimer’s. Please. I’m going to forget, so I need you to remember.”
― Elizabeth Warren, This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class

“Leave me a smile
the memory of one hour
the taste of a kiss
the warmth of a touch
I had dreaded silently
in the cold of the nights
your words of goodbye
and loss of memories.”
― Rolf van der Wind

“I walk closer and carefully touch her shoulder. “Mom?” She turns her head and looks up at me. “Who are you?” Her thin brows pucker. Her once pretty, oval face is shrouded in leathery wrinkles, a product of too many days in the sun. I look like her, except without the deep wrinkles, although my face is starting to show the passage of time.
And so begins the pain of not being remembered.
I lower myself onto a rust, vinyl-covered chair by the window. “It’s Enid, Mom. Remember? Your daughter.”
Her wrinkles deepen around her eyes, and she squints through her round glasses framed in pearl-pink plastic. “Who?”
“Never mind.”
― Jenny Knipfer, Under the Weeping Willow

“Why does she have to slowly lose herself until there’s nothing left? What cruel twist of fate handed Mom this? I imagine a large emery file in her brain, slowly grating away at her memories.
The words of Mom’s written prayer in ’77 come back to me,
‘Whatever unknown path is ahead, I pray that you will walk it with me.”
― Jenny Knipfer, Under the Weeping Willow

“My heart has been in turmoil for years over Mom’s decline into dementia, but reading her words and hearing first-hand how she struggled makes my heart ache for her. I wish I could have eased her fears, helped her more than I did. Mostly, at the beginning, before I knew what was going on, I was frustrated with her. Now I understand, and I’m crying for her. Not myself for a change.”
― Jenny Knipfer, Under the Weeping Willow

“My day has just gotten brighter. It should bother me—the fact that I must feed my mother like a toddler, but I’m determined to celebrate the things she can still do and no longer grieve so hard over what she can’t. I don’t care as much anymore if she can’t remember who we are, or even who she is, as long as she’s getting some enjoyment out of life. That’s what matters. We can do the remembering for her.”
― Jenny Knipfer, Under the Weeping Willow

“One of the things Mom’s journey with dementia has taught me is this: Life is in the small things, like the word “Amen”—a simple agreement, a yes to words prayed, and a statement claiming the promises of God.
I’ve cried and begged for Mom not to have to go through this valley of loss, but it has come regardless. Now my one plea is that—in all that she has or will lose—she will never lose the love of God and her family. That is a truth worth saying “Amen” to.”
― Jenny Knipfer, Under the Weeping Willow

“Is there anything worse than not to be known for who you are? Maybe not knowing who you are.”
― Jenny Knipfer, Under the Weeping Willow

“Thinking of that summer makes me remember the one before. I don’t recall what I had for lunch or what I watched on TV this afternoon, but I remember the day I tried to free myself from my sorrows under the weeping willow and the following summer among the flowers. Why is this so fresh and real of late? I don’t know. Maybe something I learned during that time will help prepare me for this journey into forgetfulness—the path I’m forced to walk on. Time is stealing my memories.”
― Jenny Knipfer, Under the Weeping Willow

“How do I connect with my wife and get her to connect with me? This is always a constant desperation on my part especially because she doesn't speak. I am always afraid she will stop connecting with me, especially when I get that blank look, that "daze into no man's land."That is the day I am trying to avoid. There are different things I do, depending on the moment and situation we are in, always taking every opportunity I can to promote interaction with her.”
― Sammie Marsalli, Preventing Her Shutdown

“How do I connect with my wife and get her to connect with me? This is always a constant desperation on my part especially because she doesn't speak. I am always afraid she will stop connecting with me, especially when I get that blank look, that daze into no man's land. That is the day I am trying to avoid. Everyday, every moment I can, I try to create an opportunity to “connect” to avoid her shutdown.”
― Sammie Marsalli, Preventing Her Shutdown

“Does she know she is not well? Does she know how she was before? Does she remember her past? Then I realized "what about us", our 43 years of marriage, does she remember that past? She recognizes me well but how far back? Did our marriage begin in 1979 or 2017 when she was diagnosed? I wasn't sure where I was in her memory, her friend or her husband.”
― Sammie Marsalli, Preventing Her Shutdown

“The real scary moment for me is when she wakes up in the morning and I greet her, she stares at me as if she doesn't recognize me. There is a gaze and no "connection" which really scares me. I ask her "do you want a big kiss or small one" and she sometimes gestures a small one. If no answer I just kiss her anyway and she responds with a smile, now I am "connecting". I pray that gaze of no recognition in the "wakeup" never lasts forever. "Please God, don't let her go into Neverland”
― Sammie Marsalli, Preventing Her Shutdown

“The Familiar Squatter by Stewart Stafford

Stranger at a ranting roundabout,
Changeling deep in a cranial fog,
An infant brooked with abandon,
The frail bitterness fumed within.

Another dawn, the lid loosens more,
Recognition dims, pleading for hints,
Let me see my reflection in full now,
Squatter with a thousand-yard stare.

A planet downsized to an asteroid belt,
Leave, and I surrender to disintegrate,
Core melts inside this atrophying shell,
Beyond repair, a journey of light ahead.

© Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford