Losing Someone Who’s Still Here

What Alzheimer’s took from my family, and what still remains.

Journal Entry — July 10, 2021

Larry,

You are the baddest dude I have ever known.

All the incredible things that you have shown.

Your kids will forever be in your debt.

Most people live life filled with regret.

But not you, Larry… you left it all on the table.

Bass player, Pharm D, PhD, MD.

Wish when I was younger I was able to see

All the family meetings you and Mom had.

You weren’t my stepdad… you were my second dad.

We will all miss you so incredibly much,

Especially Mom… she won’t feel that touch.

Please keep us all strong.

But we will see you again… it won’t be long.

It won’t be long.

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I wrote that in the back of my FedEx truck in a QT parking lot on Kingshighway in St. Louis during a night shift in 2021. Back then, Larry still recognized me. He still remembered my name.

A year and a half ago, that changed.

I was on the treadmill in my parents’ basement when he stormed downstairs yelling at me—convinced I was a stranger breaking into his house. I’ll never forget the look in his eyes. Pure panic. Suspicion. He didn’t know who I was.

And just like that, I lost him. Not physically. But in every other way that matters.

Up to that point, none of us—me or my siblings—had fully realized how bad things had gotten. My mom had been carrying the weight on her own, quietly protecting him, covering for the memory lapses, the confusion, the decline. But that moment exposed everything.

We had an intervention the next day.

For his safety, and hers, we moved him into a memory care center full-time.

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What Nobody Tells You About Alzheimer’s

Alzheimer’s doesn’t take people all at once. It’s a slow erasure. A cruel countdown. The body stays. The personality fades. The words get jumbled. The memories scatter. The disease doesn’t just steal the person—it steals your ability to say goodbye the way you thought you would.

Larry has aphasia now. It’s brutal. He struggles to find the right words, and sometimes can’t get them out at all. You sit there with him and watch his mind freeze up, and there’s nothing you can do. You just sit. And listen. And nod. And try not to cry.

He used to be a chief of anesthesia. He was brilliant. Hardworking. Confident. He called the money he made “fun tickets” and took pride in caring for our family. He gave us a good life—a lake house, vacations, and weekends full of music and laughter.

Now, he worries my mom will leave him. He tells her things like, “You deserve someone who can take care of you.” And yet, even in the middle of all that loss, their love still shows up.

She kisses his cheek. He holds her hand. Even if he forgets her name one day, he won’t forget how she makes him feel.

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Genius and Degeneration

Larry was the smartest person I know. And I’ve known a lot of smart people.

I’ve worked with doctors, CEOs, pro athletes, PhDs, high-powered attorneys, you name it. But Larry was a different kind of smart. The kind that doesn’t need to talk to prove anything. The kind that waits, listens, and then says something so clear or clever that the whole room tilts. It was either something deeply educational—or just plain funny.

He knew everything about everything. Pharmacology. Economics. Music theory. Why airplanes stall. What the best bass guitar tone is for a cover band in a concrete bar.

And now he can barely string a sentence together.

It’s brutal to watch.

It also makes me wonder: Is there some cruel link between intelligence and Alzheimer’s? Does a high-performing brain burn out faster?

The science is complicated.

There isn’t strong evidence that higher intelligence or education causes Alzheimer’s. In fact, some research shows the opposite. The “cognitive reserve” theory suggests that people with higher IQs, education levels, or lifelong mental stimulation are actually more protected—at least early on. Their brains are more resilient to the damage that Alzheimer’s causes, because they have more “backup pathways” to rely on.

But here’s the twist: once symptoms do show up in brilliant people, the decline often happens faster. Because by the time the damage is visible, it’s already advanced.

It’s like having a beautifully engineered skyscraper. It can absorb tremors other buildings can’t. But once the foundation cracks, the collapse is catastrophic.

There’s also some indirect connection to dopamine.

Brains like Larry’s—sharp, driven, endlessly curious—often have high dopaminergic tone. Dopamine fuels focus, novelty-seeking, problem-solving, and drive. Some studies suggest that long-term, high dopamine activity (especially under stress or sleep deprivation) might contribute to neural wear and tear, especially in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, two areas hit hardest by Alzheimer’s.

He was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s over a decade ago. And even then, he was still functioning circles around most people. His intelligence delayed the obvious signs.

But the disease caught up.

It always does.

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Watching Someone Fall

Watching a strong man fall apart is devastating.

And for me, that season triggered more than just sadness.

That same month, I moved into a new apartment. Started a new job. Life changes piled on top of grief and stress, and it all became too much. My bipolar brain tipped. I spiraled into paranoia—questioning everything, afraid of everyone. It didn’t feel like anxiety. It felt like the world was breaking in.

I cycled through several antipsychotics, trying to find stability. Some made me feel numb. Others caused terrifying restlessness (akathisia), like my whole body wanted to crawl out of itself. Some made me gain weight, others slowed my thoughts to molasses.

Eventually, I landed on a tiny dose of Latuda. Barely enough to count, but just enough to help—especially when paired with propranolol to manage the side effects.

This is what people don’t see.

They don’t see that losing someone slowly—someone who is technically “still here”—can absolutely wreck your mental health. Especially if you already live with a brain disorder like bipolar.

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Sleep and the Silent Risk

Larry was always on call.

As a chief of anesthesia, he sometimes worked 72-hour stretches without real rest. Emergency surgeries. Middle-of-the-night pages. Adrenaline-fueled shifts. He wore it like a badge of honor—because it was. He was the kind of guy who could handle anything, and everyone knew it.

But now I can’t help but wonder: Did the sleep deprivation help take him from us?

The science says yes.

Sleep isn’t optional recovery. It’s survival maintenance. During deep sleep—especially slow wave and REM stages—your brain clears out waste products using a system called the glymphatic system, kind of like a nighttime rinse cycle. That system flushes out beta-amyloid, the sticky protein that forms the plaques seen in Alzheimer’s. When you skimp on sleep, those toxins don’t get cleared. They build. They linger. They damage.

Multiple large-scale studies show that sleeping less than 6–7 hours per night in midlife significantly increases your risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s in later years. And not just a little. One study in Nature Communications followed nearly 8,000 people over 25 years and found that chronic short sleepers had a 30% higher risk of developing dementia.

Larry worked his whole life to take care of us. He sacrificed his sleep for our safety, our security, our “fun tickets.” But he paid a price.

Now I’m learning not to repeat the same mistake.

I used to brag about pushing through exhaustion. Now I protect my sleep like my life depends on it—because honestly, it does.

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What I’ve Learned

This disease has forced me to stop romanticizing burnout. To stop pretending I’m invincible. To stop waiting to enjoy life.

Here’s what Larry’s decline taught me:

• Sleep like it matters—because it does.

• Don’t be a workaholic. You’re not a hero for running on empty.

• Your relationships will outlive your resume.

• Say what you need to say now, not later.

• Gratitude should not be a future goal. It should be your reflex today.

We never know how many normal days we have left. We don’t know what’s going to happen. So we cherish the ones we’ve got.

Purpose in the Pain

There are moments when I sit in that memory care center and quietly ask God, Why is he still here?

It’s not a cruel question. It’s a wounded one.

He can barely communicate. His mind is fading fast. There are moments where he seems scared, disconnected, tired. So I wonder: What’s the point of this? Why is he still suffering?

But maybe I’m asking the wrong question.

Maybe he’s still here because we need to learn something we can’t yet see. Maybe this is shaping us. Refining our love. Humbling our pride.

Or maybe Larry, even now, is serving a purpose we don’t understand. Maybe he’s protecting someone in that memory care center—being a comforting presence to another resident, helping them feel less alone. Maybe his story is helping someone else. Maybe his suffering is part of God’s strange, upside-down way of redeeming things.

We don’t always get to see the fruit. But I believe there’s purpose. Even in this.

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Grieving Someone Who’s Still Alive

Here’s the cruel part: grief doesn’t wait for death.

When someone has Alzheimer’s, you grieve in layers. You grieve the past—their jokes, their presence, their personality. You grieve the moments that won’t happen again. And then you grieve all over again the next time they forget your name or stare blankly at you.

It’s like losing someone in slow motion.

The science backs this up. Alzheimer’s is a neurodegenerative disease marked by the buildup of beta-amyloid plaques and tau tangles that disrupt communication between neurons and eventually kill brain cells. Memory, speech, reasoning, and personality are gradually wiped out. The frontal lobe, hippocampus, and temporal lobes take a major hit—changing how someone thinks, speaks, acts, and remembers.

And as a caregiver or loved one, you’re forced to grieve without closure. There’s no funeral, no moment of collective mourning. Just repeated goodbyes that never stick.

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What Still Remains

Even though Larry is fading, some things remain.

Love still remains.

When I visit, I have to be stoic. Calm. Present. But watching him and my mom together—it’s like watching a love story that refuses to end. She never signed up for this kind of loss, but she’s still there. Every single day. And so is he, in the only ways he still can be.

When I was a kid, they’d argue in the car sometimes. Larry would snap, get irritated. But then he’d reach over, hold her hand, and say sorry. Every time. I didn’t know it then, but that was a model of real love: flawed, but faithful. Frustrated, but repairing.

That model still sticks with me. Especially now that I’m planning a marriage of my own.

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Hope in the Hardest Places

Grief changes you.

It carves new spaces inside you that nothing else could reach. It forces you to let go of control, to surrender your expectations, and to hold tighter to what actually matters.

Larry may not know everything anymore. But I do.

I know he loved us fiercely. I know he made us laugh. I know he left it all on the table.

And I know I’ll see him again—whole, healed, and fully alive.

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For Anyone Grieving…

If you’re grieving someone who’s still here—or someone who’s already gone—know this:

God sees you. He collects every tear (Psalm 56:8). He’s near to the brokenhearted (Psalm 34:18). And in Jesus, we have a Savior who weeps with us before He resurrects what’s been lost (John 11:35).

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain,

for the old order of things has passed away.”

— Revelation 21:4

“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”

— Romans 8:18

I believe Larry’s story isn’t over. Love doesn’t die. And neither do those who are in Christ.

We grieve, but not without hope.

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References

1. Sabia, S., et al. (2021). Association of sleep duration in middle and old age with incidence of dementia. Nature Communications, 12(1), 2289.

2. Iliff, J. J., et al. (2012). A paravascular pathway facilitates CSF flow through the brain parenchyma and the clearance of interstitial solutes, including amyloid β. Science Translational Medicine, 4(147), 147ra111.

3. Stern, Y. (2009). Cognitive reserve. Neuropsychologia, 47(10), 2015–2028.

4. Cools, R., & D’Esposito, M. (2011). Inverted-U-shaped dopamine actions on human working memory and cognitive control. Biological Psychiatry, 69(12), e113–e125.

5. DeTure, M. A., & Dickson, D. W. (2019). The neuropathological diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Molecular Neurodegeneration, 14(1), 32.