At some point I'll write a proper introduction to this blog but, for the nonce, I'll just plunge into my life with Jim, my beloved of 44 years. He has dementia, somewhere on the better side of the "moderate" spectrum. It could, of course, be Alzheimer's but since that usually can be determined only postmortem, I'm not eager to nail down the diagnosis. 

No question, however, about the dementia. Jim is well and truly on his way to being utterly lost in the world he lives in. And, my world shrinks increasingly around Jim and my diminishing ability to anchor him in the here and now ... and where.

Throughout our days together, and we're almost always together since I'm not comfortable leaving Jim on his own much longer than three or four hours, there are moments when I am cut to the bone, utterly bereft in the middle of whatever it is that I am saying or doing.  I used to try to talk with Jim about these apprehensions of dread but he cannot relate to them from my viewpoint, he no longer is able to do that. He relates only to his own strictured and utterly subjective experience. For Jim, there is only one viewpoint and it is very narrowly his own.

An example: as we prepare for bed around 10:30pm, I chatter about our day and help Jim find his nightclothes (which is another case in point, but onward). He suddenly asks if it is daytime or nighttime ... as we are going to bed. I want to talk with Jim about how distressing this is, he is the one person I always talk with about painful issues. But I can't. He just wants to know if it's daytime or nighttime, period. My counselor, advisor, intimate friend ... he's just not there anymore. I'm alone in all choices, decisions, estimations, considerations. I'm alone in making our way through this complicated future.

I've no doubt I can do it. But I don't want to do it sans Jim and that is, as it happens, exactly what I must do.