I continue to write, to speak up, and to speak out because I want others to appreciate that I am someone. Unfortunately, in the eyes of many others I am seen as less than a complete someone. Just because my memory is failing me, just because the hippocampus region of my brain is failing, just because I don’t always think like you do, nor do I remember as much or how you do, please, please know that in my own eyes, and I hope your eyes a whole and complete someone. I am still me: I am still Richard. I am still Grand Pa, and Dad, and Friend. I am just like you -a whole and complete human being.

I am in my mind still a complete person. I will retain that believe up until the moment of my death. I am not becoming any less a person simply because I cannot remember like you, talk like you, or think like you. I am not becoming more and more defective. I am no nearer a date certain death than are you.

I know many want me to be who I was yesterday, or last year, or the last time they saw me, but I cannot be, nor do I any longer want to be. I have ceased looking back over my shoulder at who I was, and now spend most of my time working on who I am, one day at a time. I have a disease that is organically altering who I am, how I think, what I say, and how I see and react to the world. I am changing both from the process of evolution, I am a human being who is growing older, and from the process of revolution, I have a cognitive disease that is fundamentally and irreversibly alerting the ways in which I remember, process information, and see myself. Despite all this change between my ears, still, today, this moment in time I am Richard. I am still Richard!

Please do not mourn the fact I am not who I was, or you want me to be, or we both miss this moment when we focus on yesterday or last year or twenty years ago. I and 9 million others with dementia are progressively missing more and more of today. We miss living together today, we miss the chance to love, and to laugh, and to be all we can be today, when we are mourning who I was.

I ask each of you and all of you to be with people with dementia as they are, and who they are today. It is all well and good to reminisce with us, to make contact with us by encouraging us to share memories with you from our pasts, but I too want to live in here and now, and to accomplish that I need your support.

I am having more trouble now than you are accomplishing this life-affirming goal. I do not always understand what is going on around me, why others are doing this or that to me or with me, what happens next, what happens after that.

However, if I want to stay centered in the present. I want to fully experience your love, the world today, and I need your support more than ever to live in this moment. The unintended consequences of many loving and compassionate acts from many loving and compassionate individuals is to disable me from being myself Many still want, try, wish that I would retransform into who I was.

I am me, and while I’m not always as good at explaining that to you, while my disease may inexpiably change the me I was yesterday or even a moment ago, I am still a whole and complete ME. I may be more agitated, I may be silent for longer periods of time, I may be more difficult to understand, but I am sure you can understand my need to understand I am still me. I am still an adult worthy of and a recipient of your on continuing love. I am still worthy of, I still want to be a recipient of your forgiveness and love.

I am lonely, sometimes for who I was, sometimes because I am losing the ability to understand myself. Nevertheless, I am to the end in need of a sense of presence of myself and what is going on around me. Help me break down the barriers the diseases of dementia place around my mind and my heart.

You can witness to and share your love with me. My heart still hungers to feel love. I still want and need to give my love to a world that I just don’t understand like I did prior to developing this awful disease. You can listen and learn who I am today. It is good to know who I was yesterday and in years past, but what really counts for me is to first, last, and always know who I am today. I want to better know that, and I need your help to understand and achieve that feeling and knowledge.

You can share with me your joy in knowing that you are loved, and you can bring joy into my life by loving me. You can help me communicate my own joy of living. You can help me understand how to forgive others and myself. You can support my efforts to live in the moment, this moment, today, the here and now.

In addition, even as I near the apparent end of my struggle with this disease you can treat me each moment as a whole person.

Am I, or will I ever be half-empty or half full? That is the wrong question to ask. That is the wrong way to view me. That is the wrong way to treat me. I am you, only I am a different you. I still need, want, and deserve a sense of today, a sense of dignity, the right to be treated in a truthful and straightforward manner, the right to my personal privacy.

I do not claim to know what it is like to live with one of the disease of dementia in the minds of everyone. I only speak for myself. But will you please take time to ask yourself, and most especially to ask others who are wearing shoes similar to mine if there is in their minds and hearts truth in these words.

If you find these words apply to individuals you know, please, please, every time you meet them say “hello” and not good-bye.

Richard