TOGETHER

Your mind

began to drop

pieces

into the river

like bones sifting down.

You forget

the children’s names.

You forgot

how to cook an egg.

You forgot

you didn’t love me.

You forgot

you ever said

you didn’t love me.

I tried to tell you

our sad story,

but it was trying to

unpeace

your mind from the river where

bones and stories dissolve.

My sieving fingers lifted

empty from the water. You said,

“I’m glad we are together.”

I accepted your last truth

as your best truth.

A shiny new story.

Together

we smiled.

(This poem about my husband’s last months

was published in Stormes of the Inland Sea:

Poems of Alzheimer’s and Dementia Caregiving. 2022

Shanti Arts Publishing, Brunswick, Maine.)

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Author: Patricia Mitchell Lapidus

We walk down the road wondering who we are, how we are supposed to live, and what happens when we die. Some folks like traditional answers. Some folks don't want to spend their time thinking too much. I felt called upon to search these questions in depth and in some surprising places. Each of my books is a story or group of stories about what I found during a wide-ranging journey. My home state of Maine was a hard place to leave. But I knew I had to go. And if I didn't make it back home to Maine except to visit, I did find home in the comfort and joy of discoveries that washed away the pain that had started me on my travels.

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