"When Wishes Come True" by Cindy Roman, who writes Alzheimer's Witness.
Summer Season of "Letter From A Caregiver"
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I’m Victoria. You can read why I’m publishing Carer Mentor here: Who Started Carer Mentor and Why? I created Carer Mentor to offer heartfelt empathy for Caregivers. It’s a hub of practical tools, resources, and insights. A community support network for all of us human-ing hard. ❤️ Start exploring here.
Letters from a Caregiver.
“Letters from a Caregiver” is a weekly article where a caregiver offers their wisdom, compassion, and hope to their younger self. No one knows us as well as we know ourselves, and even then, we may second-guess ourselves. The choices, challenges and tragedies we’ve faced have forged us in more ways than anyone can understand; in ways we’re still trying to decipher!
Since September 2025, thirty-two letters have been posted over three seasons.
This Summer Season so far
“Caregiving is a continuous evolution of my love, trust and courage.” by Victoria
“You Have to Receive in Order for the Circle of Love to be Complete” by Kaeli Hansen Caregivers Count with Kaeli
Today’s ‘Letter from a Caregiver’ is by Cindy Roman who writes Alzheimer's Witness
I appreciate Cindy’s articles because she shares the small everyday moments of her life—when small isn’t small at all.
“I didn’t set out to write about Alzheimer’s. I started writing to make sense of what was happening around me—and to hold onto what felt like it was slipping away.
This space has become a record of that experience.
These are stories of caregiving, of identity shifting in real time, of loving someone whose memory no longer holds you the same way. Some are quiet moments. Some are harder to sit with.
Everything here is true to what it feels like to live inside it.
If you’ve found your way here, you’re not alone.” - Cindy
She’s not only caring for her partner, Frank, but also supporting her adult son, Niko, who has high-functioning autism and ADHD, and she teaches. Cindy’s shared how a therapist helped her realise just how much she’s been ‘carrying’: Caregiver X Three When Karen did the math, I realized I wasn’t carrying one life. I was carrying three—and forgetting my own.
I recommend reading more of Cindy’s articles, which bring home the realities and challenges of her caregiving.
Thank you for sharing your letter with us, Cindy.
Author’s Bio: Alzheimer's Witness is Cindy Roman’s ongoing series of flash memoirs shaped by caregiving and loving someone with Alzheimer’s disease. These stories bear witness to what remains as memory fades. Her work has appeared in Yellow Mama, and she is the author of the memoir Who Am I?
When Wishes Come True
A letter to my younger self.
Dear Cindy,
“Be careful what you wish for. You might just get it,” Tia (aunt) told you when you were in late adolescence – maybe 18 or 19.
It’s a statement she often repeated into your 20s. Do you remember? I remember it well. At the time, you truly believed she was out of touch with life and the current times. As we sat in her kitchen and talked, she tried to help you avoid typical youthful mistakes. At times you listened but when it came to Frank, you certainly did not.
You were in a desperately innocent state of mind. You could tell something was brewing between you and him but weren’t quite sure what yet. Nevertheless, you wished for something to happen.
If you remember, the fact that he was married played little bearing on your thinking. I don’t know why, but it didn’t. You somehow believed that if something wasn’t initiated by you it couldn’t be wrong. As much as you knew from a moral perspective that it was, you justified your actions as some form of fate.
Frank was a god at the college. Every student admired and respected him. But he was choosing you.
Do you remember shortly before anything happened when you received that chain letter promising that if you sent it to others, your life would improve tenfold? You thought your life was about to set in motion a future you knew would make you happy and threw the letter away. How young and foolish you were. But it did nothing to dissuade you from your dream that felt magical. You truly believed consequences belonged to older people, not a naive 21-year-old like you.
You believed that getting the man meant getting a certain life. You didn’t necessarily believe or even want him to leave his wife and family. You thought it made him that much better a person because he would stay with them. You didn’t know what the future would hold but you didn’t care. Immediate gratification was all you sought.
Frank was all consuming in your thoughts. His charisma, electric energy, humor and status as a professional Broadway musician devoured you.
The summer when it began, you worked for him as he initiated a new musical ensemble on campus. Your responsibility, attention to detail and dedication impressed him, so he asked you to join him on his current project.
He was separating you from the others. He could have picked anyone, instead, he picked you. It was an honor and it set in motion the next forty-plus years of your life.
The evening when it finally happened he told you he loved you. You interpreted that to mean he was in love with you. Now, I recognize that the admission was more a love for another human being, not necessarily a future partner. I’m happy to tell you that will change in time. It became a mature romantic love for a partner.
How could you not wish to be with him? He was offering you the opportunity to be special to him – something you desperately wanted. At the time, you loved him enough to build your life around him, his schedule, his availability and his vacillation.
As foolish as it seems now, at the time your wish had come true. You got him and you got the life you wished for.
Much happened in the forty years that passed. He did fall in love with you. You were together, you were apart – on and off over all those years. You married when you thought hope was gone. Not that you ever wished for him to leave his family; you just needed more of his time than he could give.
Finally, after all that time, you resigned yourself to love him and only him. You tried to love another and briefly did, but that didn’t last and you found your way back to Frank. It was always about Frank.
Then the opportunity finally came to be with him as a partner. Little did you know this would prove to be a sacrifice you didn’t anticipate. Over the years, you had plans for the time you would eventually share together. It never occurred to you that the dreams you dreamt together and the places you would go would evaporate so quickly.
By the time you lived with him, his memory was poor. You attributed this to normal aging and senior moments. Once you were together a few months, it became clear this was more than memory problems. Something was wrong.
For over a year, he refused to see a doctor. By the time he did, it was Alzheimer’s.
You intended to be his partner but found yourself taking on more and more responsibility – paying bills, managing medications, becoming his spokesperson and slowly, quietly becoming his caregiver. It was a role you accepted and even embraced. He truly needed you and you intended to fulfill your promise to stay with him until the end.
There was no marriage due to his fears of what that entailed. But there was love and plenty of it. You were happy in a weary kind of way.
Over the next year you found yourself coping with behaviors that seemed increasingly off. He was angry much of the time and verbally abusive – not so much at you but to others on the road, in the market and most assuredly at the news.
You knew nothing about Alzheimer’s and didn’t research it much until one conversation with Frank’s son prompted you to learn everything you could about the disease during one long and laborious summer.
At first, much of what you read didn’t seem to apply to Frank. Then slowly things began to change. Repetition was one of the first signs and you found yourself losing patience despite the books warning you this was natural and expected. He started losing language skills, struggling for words and describing things instead of naming them. Instead of Atlantic City, he’d say, “that place where you go to gamble.”
The last year was when all hell broke loose.
He started imagining things that weren’t real. You later learned these were delusions. You found yourself absorbing his reality all day long. Then came the texts from inside the house implying you weren’t there. Then he imagined another you – the young college student version of you.
It was frightening, wasn’t it? You didn’t know what to do or whom to turn to. His doctors did little to prepare you for what was happening and where you were heading.
The most frightening feeling was relief when leaving the house and fear when returning because you didn’t know what you’d encounter when you got home. Would he know who you were? He began seeing you as different family members and not you. That will break your heart, won’t it?
The exhaustion will quickly become overwhelming but also shameful. You won’t accept that maybe this is going to be too much for you, but you’ll realize love can coexist with resentment and grief. Do you love him enough to do what needs to be done? Yes. You’ll find that you will.
It was at this point that your aunt’s words will come back to you. You will have achieved your dream but it won’t look like what you thought it would. You won’t travel, you won’t have a partner who’ll make you feel safe enough – if anything, you’ll keep him safe. You’ll became the protector.
As an adolescent, you couldn’t imagine this version of devotion because no adolescent imagines becoming a caregiver. Your wish begged for a beginning, not endings. You imagined growing old together, not one of you disappearing while still alive.
It took a long time for you to accept the dream you wished for. How could you have known reality would be so different from that initial fantasy? You don’t blame yourself for your wish to be with him. It was as real to you then as your struggles are to you now.
Your aunt’s words carry a much heavier weight now than they did forty-plus years ago. Even though you love Frank and have no regrets, the burden you carry is real, but so is the love you felt and still feel for him. It’s simply a different life than what you imagined.
Sometimes fulfilled wishes continue unfolding long after the moment they come true.
You often ask yourself if you could go back, would you have made the same wish? You probably would have. Your love was that strong; your connection that deep. You learned that some burdens are the natural consequence of loving someone long enough.
With no regrets, you move forward not just because you have to, but because you still deeply love him.
With all my love,
Your future self, Cindy
One last question to close the letter from Victoria.
Please share one quote/movie/book that’s inspired you.
“Be the change you want to see in the world” is a quote that has inspired me. The exact phrase “be the change you want to see in the world” was actually coined by American educator and social innovator Arleen Lorrance in 1970. The quote is widely, albeit incorrectly, attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. While Gandhi never used this exact wording, the misattribution stems from his similar philosophical writings.
I’ve always believed that meaningful change begins with the individual. Too often, people wait for the majority to speak first before standing up for what they believe is right. But the majority is built one person at a time. Every movement, every social change, every challenge to injustice began because someone was willing to act before it was popular or safe. If everyone waits for someone else to go first, the majority never forms. Real change happens when individuals choose to become the first voice rather than another silent observer.
Prompt for Discussion
Has a wish of yours ever come true in a way you never expected? How did it change your life?
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