Warnings and Worries - An Edited Version of This Post Is Scheduled to Appear in Letters to the Editor in the New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/08/opinion/alzheimers-mom-family-diagnosis.html

("My Mom Had Alzheimer's. Now I Do Too. But I Learned from Her Not to Despair")

There are so many echoes of my life, so many fragments that fit neatly into, if not my present, my imagined future.

I watched my mom disintegrate over a decade, the dementia robbing her of any semblance of quality to her days. And while I, now 72, am not at the point where I feel that diagnosis is imminent, so many of the symptoms exhibited by the author in the days leading up to his hearing that dreaded word applied to him are now clearly evident in me.

I fear the inevitability of that day. And I wonder, if and when it comes, will I deal with it with resignation or grace. Able to accept my fate and cherish what remains or rail against the gods for robbing me of my essential being.

Watching my mom disappear from view was one of the hardest things both my sister and I could ever imagine. And though there were moments of light (she sang along with Sinatra tunes even when she could no longer speak) those final years do often haunt me. Both as to the past and the possibility of my own future.