I say that with only slight exaggeration. When Janet became the director of our library, it occupied a 36-year-old building with limited accessibility and no room to grow. The children’s room was in the basement: Safe and clean but windowless. After an exhausting capital campaign and building project lasting 11 years, the Library moved to a beautiful new $2.8 million facility with 80% more space, over double the parking, and complete accessibility—on time, under budget and mortgage-free. Not to take away from the active board and campaign chair, but all day-to-day matters for the campaign flowed through Janet, including every grant application and fundraising mailing. She put in more hours than anyone else to complete the project. She is a hero.

My favorite detail in the finished building is the placement of the interior signs. Janet delegated this to me, and I set them all at her height of 5 foot 1, rather than the standard 5 feet. The signs are one Janet high because in that library, she literally was (wait for it) the ruler.

But she was a benevolent ruler and down to earth. I also mean “down to earth” literally: When the job demanded it, Janet got dirty sweeping, shoveling, or lugging books. In the library booth at outdoor festivals, she stuck it out rain, shine or cold. Then she’d thaw out, clean up, dry off and go give a talk to the Rotary Club. That is why the library board continued to treasure her after she came out about her dementia.

I’m grateful for my wife’s dementia because of our learnings about it. Is a frightening health condition worth the knowledge that you gain? Well, at least it’s some compensation. It’s enriching to better understand a particular corner of existence.

Now we know up close what dementia can look and feel like. Janet first sensed problems about eight years into her library career. It began with uncertain thinking that we initially attributed to stress and expected to fade after the building project. But what faded was her memory and other mental functions.

Janet’s first cognitive test with a psychologist was abysmal. She could not repeat back short lists of words or name more than a few items starting with the letter “F.” She had trouble connecting dots using a super-tricky sequence such as 1-A-2-B-3-C. She started forgetting to keep appointments and then, afterward, forgetting the ones that she did keep. I’d go with her to a doctor visit or a movie, and a week later she would recall nothing about it.

I’m grateful for my wife’s dementia because it brings us unique delights. On one special car trip, Janet gave me a great gift. For three hours, she happily let me recount the entire plot of a long novel that I had written and she had already read. The story was all new to her. (More on that novel shortly.) She also repeatedly watched me perform a one-man play that I wrote, seeing it for the first time five times! The play includes a long poem about her, so that was a handful of nice surprises. I cannot return the same gift. On days when she tells me one story three times, I cut her off.

I’m grateful for my wife’s dementia because it shows her resilience. Janet keeps bouncing back from losses such as no longer being able to drive. This is not only due to concern about confusion, but because she began to have seizures, during which she goes vacant (this is now mostly controlled by medicine). On rare occasions, she blacks out completely and collapses. Doctors tell us that seizures and blackouts are not typical of dementia. This was just bonus neurological fun (or possibly cardiac) that confirmed that Janet’s driving days were over.

I’m able to make light of this now, but giving up driving was a blow to Janet’s sense of self. During the weeks after that decision, she lost 25 pounds. A few of those returned. Slowly, she leveled off emotionally. Now she’s a gracious passenger who doesn’t look back. (Well, rarely. She does still miss the wheel.)

I’m grateful for my wife’s dementia because it has progressed slowly. This is a bright silver lining. Dementia is taking its time with her, and Janet has been able to keep working. At first, we could not conceive of that. She stayed strong on routine daily situations but became wobbly with people or matters that she encounters infrequently, including long-time acquaintances and workplace processes that arose only quarterly or annually. Don’t ask about the circulation desk at the library. Occasionally that duty fell to Janet, and she had to start virtually from scratch, with little understanding of the procedures. With obstacles such as these, how could Janet continue?

She simply came to realize that she could. Completing each day taught her that she could complete each day. Making it through another week, another month, another season … showed her that she could make it through. And not just squeeze by, but continue to help keep the library strong. In the final years of her leadership, the Library installed new memorials indoors and out, including a sculpture and butterfly garden; upgraded dozens of pieces of furniture; and saw healthy increases in its savings.

And yet Janet battled dread of somehow causing harm. It took time to regain confidence that, even at a fraction of her former self, she was still the best person to run our public library. The board of directors was thrilled to keep her on, and they gladly made accommodation by increasing particular duties of one staff member. At Janet’s request, part of her own salary was transferred to this helpful coworker. It took lots of sticky note reminders, but Janet was able to keep on keeping on right up until her retirement in summer of 2022.

I’m grateful for my wife’s dementia because it made us join forces in a new way. Now on many days, I go to work with Janet. I retired early, after 29 years at the same corporation, to pursue a moonshot project with Janet: Raising $1 million for her library. It’s a big challenge that we made all the bigger by aiming to do it with proceeds from my debut novel, the one that Janet read and then forgot. (Well, one of many books that she has read and then forgot.) I have been writing forever but have been published only in limited ways, in our local newspaper and limited forays into self-publishing. It had long been at the top of my bucket list to make a strong run at building an audience. I should say our bucket list, because Janet also wants me to have more readers. Her condition accelerated our plans. Someday became today. We didn’t want to look back and wish we had used time differently.

Eventually, I decided to promote that novel within an entire line of books that happen to tie together by being related to Christmas. I landed on that strategy because self-publishing experts recommend building a following with multiple works. The goal became to publish 20 books in 2020, with all of the profits benefiting the library. Using both past and new writing, I completed all 20, and they are all live on Amazon.

Aside from raising our sons, Janet and I have worked on nothing more important than this endeavor for our public library. The project is online at www.thisis.red, and we call it “This is RED.” That has multiple meanings.

For one thing, that first novel is titled “Red” in Latin: Rubrum. It’s a good long novel, if I do say. Early readers have received it warmly. Now I have the challenge of turning it into a bestseller to generate income for my wife’s library, along with the other books. This article is meant to help spread the word.