While I’m on the subject, I realize that I can not only blame Burt for his illness. I can pin his death on him, too. He got sick. I adjusted. It was hard. It felt like a different kind of leaving every day.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Burt died. He left me. That absolutely has to be his fault. Right? Yeah, of course [crazy lady.]
One of the things I marvelled at was Burt’s capacity to have it both ways.
I now, more soberly, reflect that that’s how our brains all work. We can hold more than one and often conflicting thought or idea. Those ideas and thoughts are not always rational. What’s going on in our heads, even without benefit of losing our minds to dementia, can be ridiculous.
Burt knew he was losing his mind – for a sad time, when he would pronounce he had dementia: Do you know what dementia means was his mantra. It was a relief when hallucinations were just visitors; the fraught nature of his disease was no longer his to solve.
You don’t get Lewy Body Dementia because you didn’t exercise or do puzzles. It wasn’t Burt’s fault that dementia is a long drawn-out distressing loss. My loved one had dementia, was ill with dementia, and I lost little bits of him. I lost him little by little. He, Burt, was blameless.
this is our life 