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If you're new to this blog and want some context for it, read this post from the day I announced my Alzheimer's disease and this post about the day I announced I had lost it. For more info, visit my website with my autobiography and all blog entries in chronological order for easier reading to catch up. There's also a sermon on the spiritual lessons I've learned through this journey through my damaged mind.

Monday, October 29, 2012

Framed with Depression

Much of my adult life has been framed and defined by depression.  This mental illness has deeply affected my relationships with Marja and the children, my career(s), my faith, my writing, my sensitivity to the suffering of others, … my entire life.  This has not been as true over the last seventeen years as my medications have given me far more emotional stability.  But several times a year, I’ll have a couple of days of the deeper depression, just to remind me it’s there.  Even after all these good years, it’s lain as a frame in the background, a deep threat and fear. 

And now the rest of my life will be framed by Alzheimer’s disease.  It’s not that it determines my life, but it will increasingly be woven into the background.  It will always be there: a threat, a fear, a question, a cloud hanging over the future.  I will act to a large extent through that frame and so will family, friends, and strangers.

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