It’s the little things that jar me , that pop the  denial bubble hiding my wife’s deteriorating dementia.

This morning, it was toothpaste.

When I handed her the tube, she didn’t know what to do with it.

“No problem,” I said, and squeezed paste on the brush for her.

Such a simple task, yesterday she’d done this herself. Today, her mind could not sort it out.

The agony is that there are moments, hours, sometimes days, when nothing seems to change, when part of me believes we have somehow escaped dementia’s death by a thousand little losses.

But that bubble will pop again tomorrow when I hand her the tube of toothpaste.

For now, I’ll keep pretending, it’s how I stay sane.

tio stib

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