Dementia

Our Fraying Hearts

Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400

I have a sense of the drama people want to hear about, but most days our ER is filled with abdominal pain and vomiting—nothing like what you’re accustomed to seeing on TV.

The Cat Who Woke Me Up

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400

The hierarchy that places humans above cats has broken down. I know, in a way I once didn’t, that cats and dogs and birds and bees and every living creature are conscious in a way that’s too hard for most of us to acknowledge. We’re all a bunch of narcissists who imagine that no life-form is quite as appealing as this one we call human. We’re unable to share the stage unless the animals are the supporting players.

Getting Dressed

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 12:00:00 -0400

Sleeping in uniform, layering against the cold, wearing your spouse’s jeans

This Is Hard To Write

Fri, 31 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0500

I’m learning that crying is what it is, not bad, not good. And that dementia is what it is, not bad, not good. And anything can happen in anyone’s life, anywhere, anytime. Not bad, not good.

Shaving

Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0400

A teenage rite of passage, a prison barber, a husband’s unfamiliar face

My Mother’s Disease Introduces Me to My Mother

michaelmark3@gmail.com — Thu, 30 May 2024 00:02:00 -0400

My mother’s disease wants / to know my name. // My mother’s disease takes / me in // with my mother’s eyes.

Home Sick

Thu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Once we start to recognize that most of us will, at some point, have to step out of our professional role to provide care, then we have to transform how we’re running our economies. At the moment, our economies are relying on these hidden tragedies that befall women behind closed doors. All to keep the wheels of industry turning.

A Letter From Sy’s Desk

Thu, 30 Nov 2023 05:00:00 -0500

In January my implausible idea of working at the magazine for fifty years will have come to pass, and I will comfortably step into a new role as editor emeritus. That having been said, it’s hard for me to say goodbye.

Speak, Memory

Thu, 30 Nov 2023 05:00:00 -0500

Askey: How do you think we will look back on our current treatment of people with dementia?

Harper: I think we will see how incomplete our approach was: The obsession with a cure. The overuse of psychotropic medications to “manage distressing behaviors.” Only something like 10 percent of that is necessary, research shows. A lot of those psychotropic medications are dangerous for people living with dementia.

Five Months After My First Husband’s Death

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 04:00:00 -0400

My son posts a picture of himself at three years old / with his father, my first husband, / who still has black curly hair and is looking right out of the photograph / at me, as if he knew this day would come, me staring back / at him and wondering where that moment has gone.

Late Delivery

Tue, 31 May 2022 04:00:00 -0400

My mother didn’t raise a thief, but by the time you round forty, you’re pretty much raising yourself. I scooped the package from its hiding place, then waved my free hand at the doorbell camera.

Evanescence

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 04:10:00 -0400

Everything new disappears, within and without. Alzheimer’s disease is eroding her hippocampus. . . . She has what the neurologist calls “rapid forgetting,” so she lives in a state of evanescence; nothing holds.

My Father’s Messages Erased From My Answering Machine

Mon, 31 Jan 2022 05:00:00 -0500

“Hi, it’s just me.” This might be the only phrase I know for sure / was on the years of messages the phone company erased / when they — inexplicably — changed my number. / The messages are gone, but the grief is still there, / ripe, a fullness I’m glad I possess. We think we want grief / to pass, but what would I do if it were gone, / like the messages, irretrievable?

The River Corrib

Fri, 31 Dec 2021 05:05:00 -0500

Lovely things, the railings. When it’s raining just right — half raining, the way it so often does here — the spiderwebs spun across the rails collect mist and shine, so that the Corrib looks like it’s swathed in sequined cloth.

Test

Fri, 31 Dec 2021 05:00:00 -0500

This time my mother got it all right. / The year, the month, and the day. / The president’s name. Where she’s staying. / So she thinks she’s going home. / When I stop by the rehab center, she tells me / to make sure the heat’s turned up, / the cable switched on again, fresh / milk in the fridge.

Ungrown

Thu, 26 Aug 2021 04:05:00 -0400

The cataracts give her an otherworldly countenance, like a blind prophet who gazes more easily into the past than into the present. She is otherworldly, because she isn’t a part of this time where I dwell — not fully. She floats closer to us and then away again before we can grasp her.

In The Car Ahead

michaelmark3@gmail.com — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 00:00:00 -0400

He needs more time to brake / so he drives slow. He needs / more time to read traffic signs / so he drives slow.

The Empty Set

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 00:00:00 -0400

I was six years old when I became aware that death was something that would happen to me. I was in the car with my mom, in the backseat because she followed the rules, and we were on our way home from the grocery store.

What Are The Odds

michaelmark3@gmail.com — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 00:00:00 -0400

That this trip isn’t the stupidest thing he’ll ever do / That they won’t drive one mile before she asks, Where are we going? three times / That she’ll ask why can’t she drive anymore

Telling Time

Wed, 01 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0400

We rent a condominium together, my eighty-six-year-old widowed mother and I. Sometimes she summons me from her bedroom at the end of the hall. I have learned to guess from her tone what it is she wants.

Visiting Her In Queens Is More Enlightening Than A Month In A Monastery In Tibet

michaelmark3@gmail.com — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 00:00:00 -0500

For the fourth time my mother / asks, “How many children / do you have?” I’m beginning / to believe my answer, / “Two, Mom,” is wrong.

Whatever Day It Is

Sat, 01 Oct 2016 00:00:00 -0400

My tester asks me to take a seat in the waiting room while she reviews my score. She wants to see if I have missed anything. I want to tell her I missed my fifties, skipped that whole section of my life, lived anesthetized for a decade, ten years on autopilot — years you think will continue to replicate themselves, dull and identical, until you die. Then the serious aging starts, and you know your fifties as gold poorly spent.

At The Last Minute

Thu, 01 Sep 2016 16:47:00 -0400

Self-surrendering to prison, saving a life, wishing to have said “I don’t,” instead of, “I do”

A Merry Little Christmas

Sun, 01 May 2016 12:12:00 -0400

I wonder if my relationship with my mother will improve as her dementia progresses. It would make both our lives simpler. I also wonder how long it will be before I forget what a mango is. Before my home is festooned with post-it notes. Before all my mother’s deficiencies become mine.

The Church Of The Gridiron

Tue, 01 Sep 2015 00:00:00 -0400

So, yes, the NFL and NCAA have instituted stiff penalties for helmet-to-helmet hits and even redesigned kickoffs to reduce high-speed collisions. But, again, all of this only helps limit concussions. The problem is that the permanent brain injuries arise in part because of those subconcussive hits, the ones players receive nearly every single play, and there’s no way to engineer those out. The tackle will always be part of the game.

Creature Comforts

Sat, 01 Aug 2015 00:45:00 -0400

Taking care of my aging parents is the right thing to do. I don’t regret the decision. But when I came here in 2010, I never imagined that I’d have to stay nearly five years. I’m afraid that, on my mother’s ninety-seventh birthday, I’ll be saying that I never imagined I’d have to stay seven years.

A Proper Funeral

Sat, 01 Aug 2015 00:20:00 -0400

Here’s a surprise: it turns out you can’t just walk into the assisted-living facility where your mother spent her final years, wrap her dead body in a sheet, and take her out into the woods to bury her.

The Substantial Dark

Sat, 01 Aug 2015 00:15:00 -0400

No one, I read online, understands why Parkinson’s causes dopamine-producing cells to die off in a region of the brain called the “substantia nigra.” With my limited knowledge of Latin I translated this as the “substantial dark” — a place in my mother’s head where words such as eyebrow, sink, and broccoli had disappeared.

Fathers And Sons

Wed, 01 Apr 2015 00:01:00 -0400

Some things, they say, / one should not write about. I tried / to help my father comprehend / the toilet

Into The Dark

Fri, 01 Aug 2014 00:00:00 -0400

In the old house I could see all the way up Pearsal Avenue / Until the houses and trees disappeared / Into the mud of memory. I stood at my window / And watched the comings and goings of cars, buses, men, / And especially the kid who lived next to the Hannigans.