Expensive

The cost of this illness is enormous. Lewy Body Dementia cost my beloved his reason, his connection to reality, or more importantly to us both, his connection to me. And it lost me the connection we had had, my connection with him.

The physical connection became as tenuous as the fragmented reality he suffered.

Affection, love, transformed but it is not the same in the altered state dementia brings. It is both deeper and more fragile.

The cost was monetary, too, as the expenses of care were high and essential.

There are the psychic tolls I suffered too, and ones he must have endured that I cannot recount. There remains what can only be thought of as PTSD. Aging alone does not fully account for what ails my body now that he’s gone. And there is no way to fully assess what that loss has been.

There also, fortunately, remain memories which traverse the many years before illness inflicted itself upon us.