All our stories
The stories below chronicle our family’s journey with frontotemporal dementia. Robert, our husband, father, and friend began to leave us in 2015. Throughout our odyssey, Robert has been Here in body and Not Here in mind.
Read our stories from the beginning here.
Before Dementia: Part 3 – His father’s boy
We’d given up hope that we’d have a second child and had let the years accumulate without pining too much for the wished-for number two…
Before Dementia: Part 3 – Magic and Leprechauns
Tracy the Leprechaun visited us every year on March 17. He left yellowed notes on tiny scraps of paper each year, handwritten in a left-handed cursive…
Before Dementia: Part 2 – Our daughter starts school
Our daughter started school at 4 ½ when she was accepted to a year-round elementary program in San Francisco. Robert took her to school on the back of his bike…
Before Dementia: Part 1 – The man I met
We met at a Thanksgiving dinner in 1982. Robert was taking a creative writing class at UT-Austin and his professor, David, was fond of his wild…
Our Journey: Part 1 – Where we started
My husband, Robert, was diagnosed with Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) in 2017. Most people think of Alzheimer’s disease when they hear the “D” word…