He Forgot She Was Gone

Love, Loss and Caregiving 2.0

Early Monday morning, I got a call from the palliative care unit.
My uncle had taken a taxi to the hospital, walked into her ward, and asked to visit his wife.
She had died two days earlier.

I hadn’t realized how far his dementia had progressed. My aunt Kata, his partner of forty years—had quietly been filling in the blanks of his mind, never letting me into this truth. As I have come to learn about dementia the hard way, they both hid it well. Everything was hidden inside their unit—the way they functioned only as one.

She passed on Saturday from metastatic colon cancer (very quickly, thank you, creator). She had wanted MAiD, and passed the first few assessments, but then didn’t qualify. When at her very late stage, she finally, finally, accepted pain meds, her mind had then become too muddled by hydromorphone to pass the very last assessment to allow her that choice.

But in only a matter of days, her body, graciously, ended the fight she didn’t want to have.

Now I’m holding what they used to carry together: the grief, the logistics, the unravelling of a life that worked because they were so beautifully—yet completely co-dependently—two halves of one whole.

In 30 minutes, I’ll be doing a remote viewing to identify her body with the funeral home.
Me in Vancouver, BC.
She—her remains—in London, Ontario.
No one else but me in their family on either side.

I’ve navigated the shock of dementia-grief before—with my mum, Doris, who is still very much alive and zesty, rolling around in her wheelchair with her muddled but relentlessly upbeat (thank you, Jesus) mind. Back then, it was all on me—but I was functioning solo, and (mostly) whole.

Now, my uncle is left as one-half, alone.
I’m trying to fill a bit of the void with care.
I have a front-row seat to his unravelling.

The disorientation of loss.
The shattered mind that forgets and grieves.
The quiet—and rising panic—when your whole world starts slipping through your hands.

And yet… I saw his love.
In her final days, Stjepan sat beside her—tender, devoted, heartbroken.
Expressing emotion like I’ve rarely seen in a man.
In Croatian, with adorable terms of endearment. She said them back in a whisper with her eyes closed.
In thickly accented English, his deep love: how she was so precious, how lucky he was, how much he cherished her.

And articulate, though he never finished high school.
He turned to me and said, simply, “I am shattered.”
He held her hand like it had always been their anchor.

I know I’m not the only one navigating this terrain.
If you’ve been here—or are here now—I’d welcome your story.