.jpg)
There is a particular kind of grief that comes before the funeral — the grief of watching someone you love disappear whilst they are still in the room. If you have sat beside a person with dementia, you know it. You learn to hold two truths at once: they are here, and they are gone.
I know this because of my aunt. For six years, I watched her retreat — slowly at first, then all at once — until the woman who used to make me laugh until my sides ached could no longer say my name. I learned to find her in the small things: the way she still hummed when she was content, the flicker of recognition that crossed her face when I held her hand. I learned, the hard way, that presence does not require performance.
Dan Cohen's memoir Awakenings in Real Life begins with something extraordinary. His father, Herbie, deep in the late stages of dementia following a stroke, briefly and inexplicably came back. For two days, he held conversations, expressed love, told jokes, asked after grandchildren by name, and requested money to tip the nurses who had been kind to him. Then, as suddenly as he had surfaced, he was gone again.
Cohen is not a doctor. He does not fully explain the medical mystery, and he is honest about that. What he does instead is something more valuable — he sits with the experience and asks what it means. What does it mean that the person was still in there? What does it mean that we so often wait until someone is lost to tell them what they meant to us? What does it mean to be awake to your own life?
These questions carry the book forward through its sixteen chapters, which move between the dementia journey and a series of family stories — vivid, warm portraits of his father as a problem-solver, a protector, a man of enormous love and considerable character. Uncle Benny, the loyalty of brothers, a living eulogy delivered at a 75th birthday party that Cohen later counts as one of the greatest gifts he ever gave — these stories are told with affection and a genuine gift for capturing the texture of a life.
The "REFLECT" sections at the end of each chapter invite the reader to pause and write. It is an unusual structure, and it will not suit every reader. But for anyone who is in the middle of a caregiving journey — exhausted, lonely, searching for meaning in the relentlessness of it — those blank pages may feel like permission. Permission to grieve, to remember, to look for the signs that your person is still there.
That, I think, is the real offering of this book. Not a medical guide, not a cure, not a roadmap through the seven stages of dementia (though those are here too, clearly explained). The offering is hope — the stubborn, unscientific kind. The kind that notices a man asking for socks to cover his eyes for a nap, because some part of him remembered that is what he always did. The kind that sits with the grief of a temporary miracle and chooses, nonetheless, to be grateful it happened.
Had I read this during my aunt's illness, I would have found it a companion. There is something profoundly settling about another person's story confirming what you already suspect: that they are still in there, and that being with them — truly present, not performatively — is enough. That the moments of clarity, however brief, however incomplete, are gifts. That love, in the face of dementia, does not need to be reciprocated in the conventional sense to be worth giving.
Awakenings in Real Life is not a polished literary memoir. It is honest about its purpose: a son sharing his father with the world, and hoping the world might share something back. For that, it deserves to be read — slowly, and with a pen nearby.
Highly recommended for families and caregivers navigating dementia.
When, from deep in the grip of dementia, my dad suddenly “awakened” in the summer of 2015, he sent a simple but powerful message to his he wanted to live. That moment changed everything. After our family's experience with my dad's awakening, I felt that I had to share this miraculous experience with the world. I quickly posted an article on the website Medium, and the article was read hundreds of thousands of times by families and caregivers searching for hope.
My father passed away in 2016, but his awakening stayed with me, and it became the spark that ignited my own. This book is about those his, mine, and maybe even yours. Through personal stories, family memories, and lesson learned, I explore how moments of clarity, big or small, can open our eyes to meaning, love, and gratitude. What began as a story of one man’s miraculous return from the fog of dementia became my own journey of reflection and discovery, and it made me want to reach out to you, to remind us that life continues to offer gifts if we’re awake enough to see them. Awakenings in Real Life is both a heartfelt memoir and an to notice your own awakenings, to share your stories, and to celebrate the transformations that bring purpose and hope into our lives.
.jpg)
.jpg)