Finding Peace and Purpose Through the Dementia Caregiving Journey

curious, you're using this word gift and now, of course, learn.

Can you give one of them, just one of the takeaways or one of the things that you feel you learned through the journey?

I think the biggest one I learned is that Dementia caregivers live in the moment.

There is no past.

There is no future.

There's the moment.

That's why they ask the same question a thousand times.

Maybe not a thousand, but several.

And my husband would eat anything in sight.

If he was finished and I still had a little on my plate or whatever, he would eat it because it was in the moment.

And managing that, I had to always be on guard.

to make sure he was safe.

And then I could get him to sit down and he loved Adam Sandler movies.

So I sit down a little bit longer.

I need to ask Adam Sandler to be a sponsor.

And I would sit down beside him and I would use that time to check my emails or write something or doing.

And then one night after I put Rob to bed, I heard this message is stop doing that.

and enter his world of being.

Wow.

And so the next day I sat beside him, which was usually about three inches apart, because he liked to be that close.

And now I put everything away, and I put my head on his shoulder, and we held hands, and I found the beauty in totally being present without thoughts of the past without doing anything, without anything thinking about the future, just being in the love and basking in the moment.

And that is a gift that I've been able now to bring since he's passed to my life alone is now I can be fully present in a moment.

I was never able to meditate before.

He could

do it,