Dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, is a condition that deeply impacts millions of families. As memory and cognition become increasingly impaired, both those suffering and caregivers face profound emotional and physical challenges. Poetry can provide a powerful way to give voice to the complex feelings and experiences related to dementia.
In observance of Alzheimer’s Awareness Month, CareYaya has written a selection of moving poems about dementia and the long goodbye it often entails. These poems encapsulate the grief, confusion, and glimmers of hope that can accompany watching a loved one traverse this difficult illness. They explore the perspective of both caregivers and those losing pieces of themselves to the fog of dementia. We hope these poems resonate with and provide comfort to those walking the uneven road that dementia frequently follows.
The selected poems range from meditations on fading recognition and the bitterness of this loss to odes celebrating the resilience of the human spirit. While beautifully articulating the pain of dementia, they also uncover nostalgia, love, and hard-won wisdom learned from the caregiving journey. We invite you to share these poems about dementia and Alzheimer's widely to help spotlight the fighters, caregivers, and families impacted during Alzheimer’s Awareness Month and beyond.
Into the Mist
Step by measured step you descend
Into the mist swirling thick in your mind—
The mist concealing your past, your present, yourself
As memory's landscape becomes strange, unkind.
I reach out to grasp your hand and lead you back—
Back to our shared days, our tether of years
But you slide further, no anchor remains
As the fog of forgetting obscures all that nears.
You may slip beyond my reach before long
Adrift in lost memory’s isolating haze
But I'll wade through the shadows by your side—
With love as my lantern to light the way.
Forgotten Days
My mind slips sideways, Tripping over lost memories, Grasping at times faded, Like old photographs left in the sun.
The days blur together, A soup of muddled moments. Who visited this morning? Whose face appeared at my door?
The present arrives unknown, Each interaction a new revelation. My history erased, The story of my life rewritten.
But though names may escape me, Emotions remain familiar. Love still swaddles this failing mind, Its warmth a comforting shield.
Piece by piece I fade, A mosaic with missing tiles.
But even now colors shine through, Fragmented yet still beautiful.
The Disappearing Mind
The disappearing mind, it troubles me -
My memories grow distant, cease to be. I grasp at threads, once shining, now turned dim - Where has my former self so hurried?
My waking hours, a dull and listless fog, That cloaks familiar faces, once my dogs. The names and places I have known before, Are shadows, ghosts that haunt me evermore.
At times, my old awareness will alight - A moment when my mind is still aright.
But quickly fades again the glimmer, then -
The coming dark, unknowing me again.
My soul discovers fields that once were plain Are now with mystery and void terrain. I wander lost amid the brush thereof -
Myself a stranger to my known self.
But though my reason ravaged be, and flees -
Love yet remains, its light my dawn-lit trees. With gentle grace, loved ones take my hand -
Guide me through oblivion’s faded land.
Descent to Madness
In the creeping fog it came upon me, A darkness of the mind that could not flee, Blurring the lines between then and now, Memories receding, I know not how.
The days and months did blend together, Faces familiar rendered as strangers, The rising panic as I grasped in vain For threads of my self, but all had drained
Away into a vast and empty night,
Names and words once plain now took flight,
My desperate mind scrambled without gain Only elusive wisps left in their train
To wander lost down twisting halls alone Each door unlocked led into the unknown, My broken cries could but echo back
As marble walls absorbed each pleading track
Further into the endless, twisting maze I tread with lengthening, aimless days Bewilderment upon my shattered mind
In coiling shadows I, a prisoner, pined
Until at last I sunk into the places
Where madness dwells with souls it darkly braces No glimmer left of who I used to be Just shifting grey shadows enveloping me.
A Fading Meadow
I wandered as a child in meadows bright, That stretched ahead all gold and green delight. Each flower and tree familiar to my gaze— Old friends that filled the summers of my younger days.
But now I walk bewildered through the grass. The flowers have withdrawn—their colors pass Beyond my faded sight. Each leaf and stone By amnesiac fog lie dull and lone.
A chill wind blows; the trees groan overhead, Their names forgotten, though we long were wed.
I search the shadows—where has that path gone That once so clearly led me safely home?
I cry for help, no friendly voice replies;
My desperate shouts but echo and then die Among the alien boughs, and I but hear
My heartbeat racing brittle, sharp with fear.
The meadows of my youth, now harsh and bleak, Their warmth and light lost beyond memory’s reach.
My tracks erased as paths twist out of view—
The present dim, the past made stranger, too.
I wander lost, no landmarks left to guide.
My younger self here lost—whate’er betide. The fading, strange terrain I no more know, As final flowers beneath winter’s footfalls go.