In the beginning it was subtle,
And thus went unobserved.
He’d be reading a good article
And he started missing words.

Of course he was intelligent
And his mind filled each Lacuna,
But I wonder, could we have saved him
Had we only noticed sooner?

Eventually whole paragraphs
began to escape his grasp.
A mental fog enveloped him,
He’d forget what he’d read last.

Every day he tried to work
Was like the day before.
Until he had to admit
He couldn’t do it anymore.

A subtle dyskinesia
Like a seaquake in the brain
Left the poor man terrified
Of things left unexplained.

Perhaps it was a mercy
when dementia settled in,
I hope he lacked awareness
of the Hell he’d entered in.

When his vital signs began to fail
I found I could not cry.
The one I loved had vanished
Long before the day he died.