Experiencing Dementia Through Poetry

“Ambiguous Loss” imagines the feelings and experiences of people living with dementia that most caregiver perspectives only approximate. As the title suggests, the poem reveals ambiguities about this condition: namely, which parts of the self are lost or preserved (“[the] heart or [the] mind”) and what it feels like to undergo these changes (“moments of pleasant pain”). Through metaphor and sensory-rich language, the speaker helps us see these experiences as “[a]nd—not but” while demonstrating t...