The Shadow I Fear

I’ve brushed against death’s cold presence more than once in my life. When I was 22, a devastating illness left me in a coma on a ventilator for two weeks. I survived, but at a cost—my memories of life before that time were stripped away. Even now, my past is a patchwork quilt stitched together from the recollections of others: stories my family and friends have told me, fragments of a life I once lived but cannot recall.

At 50, I faced a heart attack, a sudden jolt that reminded me of my fragility. A decade later, cancer came knocking, demanding yet another reckoning. These brushes with mortality have given me a perspective that many might not share. I don’t fear death; in fact, I feel I’ve already cheated it three times. The reaper has come for me and, each time, we have sat together for a coffee and a chat, then parted on cordial terms. When my time finally arrives, I will meet it with quiet acceptance, knowing that I’ve already been granted extensions to live a life full of love, creativity, and meaning.

My faith bolsters this sense of peace. I believe that death is not the end, merely the turning of another page in the story of my soul. This belief, coupled with my experiences, gives me a calm resolve about the inevitable. But there is one shadow that looms larger than death, one fear that strikes at the heart of who I am: the fear of losing my mind.

I have seen what dementia can do. My mother’s late husband, a kind and vibrant man, became a shell of his former self, slipping further and further into a void until there was nothing left but the faintest glimmer of the person he had been. As a nurse, I cared for countless patients who no longer recognised their families, their surroundings, or even themselves. Their eyes would search the room with a vacancy that spoke of a cruel theft, one that robbed them not of life but of their very identity.

For someone like me—a writer, a storyteller, a lover of words—the thought of losing my mind is terrifying. Writing is not just a pastime; it’s the core of who I am. It’s how I process the world, how I preserve the memories that matter, how I connect with the essence of myself. To lose the ability to put words to paper, to forget the stories I’ve told and the ones I’ve yet to tell, would be to lose a part of my soul.

I often think about the long goodbye of Alzheimer’s, the way it creeps in and steals a person’s essence piece by piece. I have watched it hollow out others, and I can’t help but wonder: would I recognise the early signs if they came for me? Would I know when my words started to slip, when the names and faces of my loved ones began to blur? Or would it be like the coma in my younger years—a sudden, irrevocable erasure of self?

I don’t fear death because I know it will come, and I trust that something awaits beyond it. But dementia? That is a thief I cannot outwit, a shadow I cannot confront head-on. It’s a fear that lingers in the back of my mind as I write, sing, and live my life. It’s a fear that drives me to treasure every moment, every memory, every word I put down on the page.

I don't know whether there is any gift in that fear. Perhaps there isn't. But it does remind me to treasure the things that matter while they are still mine to treasure: the people I love, the memories I still hold, and the words I put down on the page. There may come a day when I no longer remember writing them, when the stories and poems that meant so much to me belong more to other people's memories than to my own. I cannot pretend that thought doesn't frighten me. But the words will still be there. Even if one day I can no longer remember them, perhaps they will remember me.