Poem about caring for someone with dementia (Esquina Poetica)

This is a beautiful poem about caring for and loving someone with dementia. I saw it on the “Esquina Poetica” (Poet’s Corner) Facebook page.

Excerpt:

[It] is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be.
It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honor what emerges along the way.

Check out the full poem below.

Robin

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Poet’s Corner / Esquina Poetica
July 9, 2022

Posted by:
Heidi Priebe
Maxine Noel, Soulmates

To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be.

The people they’re too exhausted to be any longer.

The people they don’t recognize inside themselves anymore.

The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into.

We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back when it burns out; to become speedily found when they are lost.

But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be.

It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honor what emerges along the way.

Sometimes it will be an even more luminescent flame.

Sometimes it will be a flicker that disappears and temporarily floods the room with a perfect and necessary darkness.