It didn’t take long to discuss the medical options when Michael Whitehead was diagnosed with dementia.  “There were none,” writes his wife, Canadian mystery novelist Louise Penny, in the October/­November issue of AARP the Magazine. But there were plenty of decisions to make, and that’s what Penny chronicles in her moving essay, “The Last Promise.”  At first, she decided that little would change. They would continue to live in their countryside house, they would do everything together and she would never be angry.  It turns out that such decisions weren’t up to her — or to her husband. There was a “new normal,” and it shifted every day.  “He was a scientist. A full professor of medicine, a doctor with an international reputation. And now, he couldn’t divide 2 into 20. And then he couldn’t copy a triangle. Or write a full sentence. Or tie his shoes,” she writes.  What he could do was move with her into a one-level condo, where they could use an elevator instead of stairs and visit with friends more frequently. Penny also learned to ask for help: regularly scheduled massages for him and yoga classes for her. She found herself full of tears but also full of gratitude that, despite it all, Whitehead remained “the happiest man in any room.”  To continue writing (her mysteries are perennial bestsellers), she alters her day so that she rises at 5 a.m. and writes until 10 a.m. “The rest of the day is his. Caregivers come in every day, and that gives me a break to see friends, to read or watch TV. To go for walks. Or nap. Or eat gummy bears in the garden. Every morning and every evening, when we’re alone, I whisper in Michael’s ear. That he is magnificent. He is brave. He is handsome and brilliant and kind. That I am so happy to be his wife. I tell him that he is safe and he is loved. And he smiles.”  Yet she is cleareyed about how painful it is to lose someone to dementia: “I cry a lot. I miss him so much. The companionship, the ease. The thoughtful conversations. I miss someone to travel with and have dinners out with. Someone to discuss the day with.  “I miss the deep hugs. I miss being loved. I am often lonely, and exhausted and feel not quite adequate. I want it to be over. And dread the day that it is.”  In the end, she explains, they were able to live their lives “fully, right to the end.”  According to an editor’s note at the end of the essay, Whitehead died on Sept. 18.
She missed him as he slipped away to dementia, but they lived their lives fully to the end.