"Resolve swept through me. I was experiencing a mental breakthrough! From now on, I must concentrate on what I have, not what I have lost" (Friel, 1993, p 98).
In her 1993 memoir, Living in the Labyrinth: A personal journey through the maze of Alzheimer's, Friel painfully describes how she has been woefully aware of her emerging deficiencies that include loss of spatial relations, word finding difficulties, personal memory gaps and the like. These losses render her unable to work professionally, but also create a chasm with her family. She works hard to keep these losses her little secret and her family often cannot understand why she cannot proceed with things as she has done in the past.
Tragic flaws are inherent in being human. We lose something over the course of our lives: our looks, athletic abilities, our loved ones, our ability to drive, something. Can we look beyond what we have lost and lovingly embrace what we still have left? Can we change our lives despite knowing the label of these pending losses? It is a challenge that I am posing to myself. But this challenge is also a fight. A fight to overcome the status quo, to do more, to be more open, and to love. A fight that needs to fought before it is too late.
And so, today, at this very moment, the fight for living, a fight for relishing what I have begins. . .
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