by Shane Cunningham

I flew to Utah, on short notice, to work out new living arrangements for you. bvFTD has exhausted everyone who loves you, and who have heroically taken care of you across five different living situations over the past four years.

We are in our fifteenth year of this journey together.

Your life-long dream was to live with your twin sister, so that “we can grow old together.” And over these past two years, she stepped in and provided for you in the most loving way possible.

Now, for the first time, you will move into a beautiful assisted-living home. There, everyone is well versed in your care, and making new connections will be possible. We have tried so hard, my love, to provide what you needed these past four years; we just ran out of “us.” While your sister and I are sad, and your sweet daughter is hurting, we see potential benefits that exist beyond our individual capacities. And we have hope that your last few months will not be “less than,” but “more than.”

This is the city where we met, and our love blossomed. This is where I attended school, and you sacrificed much of your early womanhood to becoming a mother and assisting me with my education at Brigham Young University. During the twenty-five years of our beautiful life together, you were always so self-sacrificing. But then bvFTD changed everything. We were broken for years! Now we are “doing better, because we know better.”

On our way home I drove you past each of our apartments from that first four-and-a-half years of our life together. I was amazed that, nearly forty years later, each of those old homes and apartments near BYU’s campus remain intact and inhabited. As we passed by, I would stop the car briefly and ask you questions about each home. It quickly became apparent that most of our memories are now mine and mine alone. We stopped to take a photo of us at our last residence from those BYU years – where we brought home our first two children, Chris and Jordyn. And while you had no recollection, what happened there was love and happiness!

On the drive back to Jordyn’s house, I realized that this was the last time we would tour the beginnings of our life, and that our once shared memories are now held only by me. I wept, but hid the tears from you. (Tears that you no longer have the capacity to understand.) We drifted past the campus and the Missionary Training Center, where we first met, and sadness enveloped me as I recognized the fragility and fleeting nature of what was.

At that moment, the radio station began to play Hall & Oates’ “Maneater,” and just like that – you came to life. As your hands mimicked dancing in your weak and halted way, I said to myself, “there you are!”

And then, as we turned into the driveway, a fitting song from the Eighties came on the radio. As John Cougar Mellencamp belted out, “A little ditty about Jack and Diane,” I was reminded that, “Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone…”

Every moment of our journey has been worth it to me, Faye. Thank you for giving me all the love that you had in you. We were then, and remain, “two American kids doin’ the best they can.”