She was my cousin. A bright and witty woman.

She wrote, she taught, she traveled. 

She researched our family's collective history. 

She prayed, told jokes.

She enjoyed. 

She slowly lost her ability to walk, but she persevered with style all her own.

 

Then the pandemic came. She wrote her way through the pandemic and when the plague came to an end so did her writing, because dementia, sometimes slow moving and then speeding at the pace of a fast moving train, erased her words, smudged her thoughts and sent her writings to the wind, where they are traveling now.

 

Dementia is something we all fear. It rearranges us and gradually erases who we were.  This small series is my attempt to read into my beloved cousin; to try to understand the intersection of who she was and what she became as dementia claimed her. It is not a series yet completed, but I set it here to remember her and try to understand the last two years of her decline. 

 

How can any of us understand what progresses through the mind of another?

​

Dawny died on February 12, 2026 at the age of 75. 

May her memory be for a blessing.