Dementia and Alzheimer's

The memories are dissolving. First the small ones — a name that no longer comes, a key that is nowhere to be found, a sentence that disappears in the middle of speaking. Then the larger ones. Familiar faces lose their associations. One's own home becomes foreign. Entire chapters of life fade like ink on wet paper.

Medically, dementia is described as a progressive decline in cognitive abilities, Alzheimer's as the most common form — with plaques and tangles in the brain, with dying nerve cells, with an organ that withdraws piece by piece. That is the biochemical reality. And it is serious.