🧠Dementia & Caregiving
Memories may fade, but love does not.
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Dementia changes more than memory. It changes families, routines, conversations, and sometimes even identities. These poems and songs were written for those living with dementia, the caregivers who faithfully walk beside them, and the families who continue to love through every forgotten name and every remembered smile.
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If these words help you feel seen, understood, or a little less alone, then they've done exactly what they were meant to do.
Remember We Love You
The Story Behind This Poem
Dementia doesn't only steal memories. It slowly changes the people we love, leaving families to grieve someone who is still sitting beside them.
I wrote Remember We Love You after watching my own father disappear a little more each day. He was still with us physically, but dementia slowly took away the man who had always been our hero. This poem is for every son, daughter, spouse, grandchild, caregiver, and friend who continues to love someone through that difficult journey.
If you're walking this road today, I hope these words remind you that you are not alone.
REMEMBER WE LOVE YOU
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You are here
Then you're not
You can remember
Now you've forgot
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You're loving life
Then all is lost
You've got money to burn
Then ask, "How much does that cost?"
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You'd really like a friend
Then sit in your room all alone
You ask everyone to stop bothering you
Then complain no one calls you on the phone
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You ask, "Why doesn't anyone come to visit?"
You might as well stay in bed
But you don't remember
All the cruel and hateful things that you've said
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Where did you go?
What happened and why?
I miss your corny jokes
You were such a fun-loving guy
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I only get one father
And one mother, too
Since she's been gone from us
You don't know what to do
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Your dementia keeps growing
Every single day
The you we all loved
Is slowly fading away
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To have you here with us
Your image so clear
But to see that vacant stare
Gives us sadness and fear
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You wear your frustration
Like shoes that don't fit your feet
We dread that dark day
When your dementia is complete
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We tell you we love you
With tears filled with sorrow
Because we know you won't remember
When dawn breaks tomorrow
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We'll keep telling you we love you
We'll smile and be sad
We won't forget you were our hero
Our best friend...
Our Dad.
🎵 Hear "Remember We Love You"
Part One of The Dementia Trilogy
WHERE DID I GO?
The Story Behind This Song
If Remember We Love You tells the story through the eyes of a family, Where Did I Go? tells it through the eyes of the one living with dementia.
Imagine waking up each day knowing something is wrong but not understanding what it is. Faces are familiar but names disappear. Rooms once filled with memories become strange places. Words slip away before they can be spoken, and frustration often replaces understanding.
This song is my attempt to give a voice to those who can no longer explain what they're feeling. Beneath the confusion, fear, and silence is still the same person longing to be understood, loved, and treated with dignity.
Perhaps the most important line in the song is the simplest:
"Please answer soft and slow."
Sometimes the greatest gift we can give someone living with dementia isn't an answer.
It's patience.
It's kindness.
It's love.
WHERE DID I GO?
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I was standing in a hallway
Now I don’t know where it leads
Faces gather all around me
But I cannot name their needs
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I reach for words like falling leaves
They slip through trembling hands
I once was captain of this vessel
Now I barely understand
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Why does everyone look worried
When they smile and call my name
Why do old rooms feel unfamiliar
Yet somehow all the same
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Somewhere inside I’m still here
Though I flicker in the fog
Like a lantern in the distance
Half remembered through the smog
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Don’t mistake my silence for leaving
Or my anger for goodbye
I am fighting tides you cannot see
As pieces of me drift by
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And if I ask the same thing twenty times
Please answer soft and slow
Because I’m frightened too
And sometimes…
I don’t know where I go
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If I forget you in the morning
Please forgive what I can’t hold
Somewhere in me lives your laughter
Somewhere your stories still are told
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And when I disappear completely
Past what memory can do
Hold my hand
And keep on saying
I remember…
I love you
🎵 Hear "Where Did I Go?"
Part Two of The Dementia Trilogy
When You Forget, I'll Remember
The Story Behind This Song
Every story deserves an ending filled with love.
The first song in this trilogy tells the story through the eyes of a family watching someone they love slowly disappear. The second gives a voice to the one living with dementia—the fear, the confusion, and the longing to be understood.
This final song is a promise.
It is the promise every loving son, daughter, spouse, grandchild, and caregiver quietly makes:
"When you can no longer remember... I will."
Dementia may steal names, memories, and conversations, but it cannot erase a lifetime of love. The moments shared, the lessons taught, the laughter around the supper table, the sacrifices made—those things become part of the people left behind.
Love becomes the memory.
This song is my thank you to my father, and to every caregiver who chooses patience over frustration, compassion over anger, and love over despair.
When the journey finally ends, may those we love find peace, knowing their memories live on in the hearts of those they leave behind.
Because sometimes...
Love remembers what memory cannot.
— Mark Stracener
WHEN YOU FORGET, I'LL REMEMBER
Part Three of The Dementia Trilogy
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When you forget my name,
I'll remember yours.
When you lose the road,
I'll walk beside you.
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When your stories scatter,
I will gather them.
When your mind grows dim,
I will be your light.
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I will remember...
Your laughter at the supper table.
Your corny jokes.
Your rough hands.
And your gentle heart.
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Disease may borrow memory,
But it cannot steal love.
And when you can no longer know me,
Know this—
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I know you.
I carry you.
I thank you.
I forgive you.
I love you.
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And when your final forgetting comes...
Rest.
Because I will remember...
Enough for us both.
🎵 Hear "When You Forget, I'll Remember"
"Love remembers what memory cannot."
End of The Dementia Trilogy