I ran into Jane in the hall today. As I was saying hello she told me she wanted to talk, so we sat down together in my office.

Jane has lived with us for just over a year. She is in her early 90s and is one of those women who is beautiful inside and out. She was married for 65 years, raised three children who now have grandchildren of their own.

Jane has dementia. You probably know by now that I find working for people living with dementia fascinating, and Jane is unique in that most people can’t really tell there is anything wrong. She can hold short social conversations, she is kind and welcoming to everyone around her. But her short-term memory has an expiry of mere moments, and that makes her very anxious.

Settling into conversation in my office, Jane was distraught when she told me that she couldn’t “remember anything” and she didn’t know what to do. We have had this conversation a dozen times or more since we met. Jane doesn’t remember, but I do, and I have delicately tested how to respond over time, so today I simply said “I know.”

“Why is this happening?” she asked. And, while dementia is NOT a normal part of aging, it is for Jane, so I responded “because you are getting older and your brain is, too.” I explained how, like her skin is drying and wrinkling, her brain is drying and wrinkling a little, too, making the signals harder to get where they need to be. (There is very little science in this, mind you, just a simplistic way of explaining what is happening.)

“What can I do to make it stop?” was her response.

“Nothing, Jane. And it’s okay. Your life is different now but it is still good. You are a beautiful, kind woman. You have a smile that lights up the room and people feel good when they are around you. That’s all you need to know.”

“Really?” she said with a sigh of relief, assured in the moment.

A few moments later she told me that she was really confused and asked why. I calmly repeated what I had said before as if it was new information (because, to Jane, it was new information).

“But what can I do?” she cried.

“Just keep living your life. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. You are doing okay. You get confused, but most of the things we do every day are instinctual and habitual. There is a whole team of caregivers here to help you, so there are a lot of things you don’t even need to remember. Just live your life and do things that make you smile, we will make sure you are okay and everything will be just fine.”

Please recognize that I believe in individualized care and wouldn’t generally approach someone I didn’t know as I now approach Jane. Although she has no recollection of ever being in my office, the fact is she has sat in the same chair and said the same words many times. I’ve learned from getting to know her and her family that the best thing I can do is calm her anxieties by allowing them to be expressed. I can hold her hand and let her tell me she doesn’t understand over and over until I help her accept, once again, that she is okay.

Maya Angelou told us that people might not remember what we say and do but they’ll remember how we made them feel. People like Jane don’t *remember* how we made them feel. But they still feel it. And, to me, that’s the most important part of all.