There is a kind of goodbye
that never quite arrives.

No final breath.
No closed chapter.
Only the slow unraveling
of someone you love.

Their face is still familiar,
their hands still warm,
but the conversations become fragments,
and yesterday slips quietly through their fingers.

You grieve them
while they are still sitting in front of you.

You smile.
You answer the same questions.
You hold the same hand
that once held yours.

Then you leave,
and the drive home is often quieter
than the visit itself.

The hardest part
isn’t always what dementia takes from them.

Sometimes it’s what it leaves behind.

The guilt.
The wondering.
The impossible questions.

Did I visit enough?
Did they know I was there?
Would they want to live like this?

No one knows.

But sometimes, in the silence,

I wonder if somewhere beneath the confusion
the person they once were
is still knocking softly on the door—

not afraid of death,
only weary of the prison.

A prison with no bars.
No locks.
No windows.

Only a mind
that no longer remembers
how to find its way home.

If love alone could heal this disease,

there would be no dementia.

So we do the only thing left to do.

We sit.

We hold their hand.

We whisper their name
even when they cannot whisper ours.

And we keep loving them
until mercy finally does
what love never could—

set them free~

Published by Jeff

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