Latest / Your People: Finding Community, Friendship & Belonging / The Slow Goodbye: Grieving a Friend Who Is Still Here | Your People
Transcript
- She is sitting across from me, laughing at my terrible joke, but I am already mourning the woman she used to be. It is a quiet, hollow ache that has no funeral, no card in the mail, and no one else who quite understands the weight of it. Let’s linger there for a second. That image of her, present in body but distant in spirit, is something so many of you have whispered about in the dark corners of our comment sections. You know the look. You’ve felt it in your chest when a friend reaches for their phone and forgets how to unlock it. When they tell the same story for the third time in an hour, not because they are confused, but because the memory is fresh again, untouched by time. We call it dementia, but really, it is a slow unraveling of the self. And as the person left behind, we are forced to watch the tapestry come apart thread by thread. I want you to know right now that your grief is valid. It is real. It is heavy. And it is okay if you don’t have the words for it yet. There is a specific loneliness to this kind of loss. Society tells us that grief begins with death. We send flowers when someone passes. We wear black. We hold hands at funerals. But what do we do when the person is still breathing? What do we do when they are eating dinner with us, looking us in the eye, but the shared history that bonded you is dissolving like sugar in hot tea? The 'quiet part out loud' here is that we feel guilty for grieving someone who is still alive. We worry that our sadness makes us selfish. We worry that we are being cruel by missing the version of them that existed five years ago. Let me tell you something important: you are not being cruel. You are being human. You are honoring the life that was, even as you try to love the life that remains. I remember calling a listener last month, let’s call her Elena. She told me about her husband, Mark. They had been together for forty years. He had early-stage Alzheimer’s. One day, he looked at her and asked who she was. Not in a joking way. In a genuine, curious way. He didn’t recognize his wife of four decades. Elena said she froze. She felt a coldness spread through her fingers, down her arms, settling deep in her stomach. Where did you feel that in your body? Because that physical sensation is the anchor of your truth. It is the body remembering what the mind cannot. Elena thought she was failing him. She thought she should have been stronger, more prepared. But when we talked, I realized she wasn’t failing. She was witnessing. She was bearing witness to the most profound transition two people can share. Her pain was not a sign of weakness; it was a sign of depth. In my previous life, before I started this podcast, I spent years designing public spaces. I thought community was about infrastructure. About benches placed just so, about lighting that encouraged conversation. I was wrong. Community is about presence. And when dementia takes over, the infrastructure of your friendship collapses. The inside jokes that took twenty years to build? Gone. The shared trauma of a difficult divorce? Forgotten. The plans you made for next summer? Erased. It feels like losing a library where every book was written by both of you. And yet, new books are being written, even if the pages are blank or scribbled with confusion. We have to learn to read these new pages. We have to find connection in the sensory rather than the narrative. A touch on the hand. A familiar song. The smell of rain. These become the new language of belonging. So, how do we show up? How do we love someone who cannot love us back in the way we need? This is where the work gets hard. We stop trying to correct them. We stop trying to pull them back into reality. If they think we are going to visit our daughter tomorrow, and we aren’t, we don’t argue. We don’t say, 'But Mom, Sarah is busy.' We say, 'Tell me about Sarah. What was her favorite color?' We enter their world instead of dragging them into ours. It requires a surrender that feels terrifying at first. It feels like giving up control. But it is actually an act of radical empathy. It is saying, 'I see you. I am here with you, exactly where you are.' Not where you were. Not where you should be. Here. Now. In this moment of confusion, there is still love. There is still dignity. There is still a person waiting to be seen. I know this sounds counterintuitive. How can impermanence be a gift? But consider this: when we know that every moment is fragile, we pay attention. We notice the way the light hits their face in the afternoon. We listen to the tone of their voice, not just the words. We cherish the silence. Dementia strips away the noise of our lives—the schedules, the achievements, the social media performances—and leaves only the essence. And often, that essence is kinder, softer, more childlike than we remembered. You might find yourself laughing more. You might find yourself crying less, because you are too busy holding the space for joy. It is not a replacement for the past. It is a different kind of relationship entirely. One built on pure presence, untethered from expectation. If you are walking this path right now, I want you to breathe. Put down the phone. Close your eyes. Feel your feet on the floor. You are doing the hardest work imaginable. You are loving someone through the fog. And you are allowed to be tired. You are allowed to miss them while they are sitting right there. You are allowed to wish for a break. None of this makes you a bad friend. It makes you a human being navigating an impossible situation with grace. Please, reach out to someone. Call a sister. Text a friend. Tell them, 'It’s hard today.' You do not have to carry this alone. Community is a verb. It is the act of showing up, even when it hurts. Even when it doesn’t make sense. Especially then. Thank you for letting me into your heart today. I am so proud of you for showing up, for listening, for feeling. Until next time, keep being gently, beautifully imperfect. I’ll be right here, waiting for you. Love you.