Walk With Me - Navigating My Long Goodbye

What if the lessons learned at a piano bench could help us care for someone living with Alzheimer's?

In Walk With Me: Navigating My Long Goodbye, a retired piano teacher reflects on life with Alzheimer's and shares what she wants her husband and loved ones to understand as her needs change. Written together with her husband, this deeply personal book brings the patience, listening, repetition, and flexibility of music teaching into the daily work of caregiving.

Her request is simple: keep seeing the person you love.

Through candid reflections and everyday examples, Walk With Me explores communication when words become difficult, familiar routines that offer comfort, music as a source of connection, and the frustration and grief that can accompany memory loss. It also addresses caregiver exhaustion, asking for help, belonging in a church community, affection and personal boundaries, the possibility of memory care, and wishes for the end of life.

Christian faith runs throughout these pages, offering a language of hope, dignity, and love when the future feels uncertain.

Included are practical worksheets for organizing care-team contacts, recording physician-directed medication changes, and tracking daily observations, moods, and sleep.

This is a personal account, not a medical manual or a promise that every family's experience will be the same. It offers one couple's perspective for spouses, adult children, friends, and others caring for someone with dementia.

For those learning how to stay close through change, Walk With Me offers companionship-and a heartfelt reminder that a person's worth never depends on what they can remember.