This month, Alzheimer's Resource Alaska is focusing on the importance of continuing to see, include, and value the person beyond a dementia diagnosis, with a special focus on what that can look like in communities across Alaska. The organization is having an intergenerational concert Oct. 18 at the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts. This is the Forget Me Not Chorus rehearsing.
When someone receives a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease or another form of dementia, it can feel as though life has suddenly been divided into a before and an after.
Conversations quickly turn to what may change. Memory, independence, driving, finances, caregiving, and the future all become part of a new vocabulary for families.
Those conversations are important. Families need information, resources, and a plan for what may lie ahead. But when we focus only on what dementia can take away, we risk overlooking something equally important: the person who is still here.
A diagnosis does not erase someone's desire to laugh with friends, sing a familiar song, spend time with family, contribute to their community, or simply feel that they belong.
At Alzheimer's Resource Alaska (ARA), we see that every day.
We see people living with dementia forming friendships, trying something new, sharing stories, making others laugh, singing together, and continuing to be active participants in their families and communities. We also see what happens when families find spaces where dementia is understood and they no longer feel the need to explain or apologize.
That sense of belonging can become incredibly important as dementia progresses.
There is a tendency to define people living with dementia by the things they can no longer do. But abilities, interests, personalities, relationships, and a lifetime of experiences do not simply disappear with a diagnosis.
Someone may have difficulty remembering what happened yesterday and still recognize the melody of a song they have loved for decades. A person who struggles to follow a complicated conversation may light up when an old friend walks into the room. Someone who needs assistance with everyday tasks may still have humor, wisdom, affection, and something meaningful to contribute.
Those moments are easy to underestimate, but they matter.
For the person living with dementia, opportunities for connection can provide purpose, familiarity, and joy. For caregivers and family members, they can offer an opportunity to reconnect with the person they love outside the daily responsibilities of caregiving.
Sometimes that happens over a cup of coffee. Sometimes it happens during a support or engagement program. Sometimes it happens while making art, sharing a meal, or singing a familiar song. The activity itself is often less important than what it creates: an opportunity to be together.
In Alaska, maintaining that connection can come with unique challenges. Families may live hundreds of miles from specialized services. A trip for support or education might involve hours on the road, a flight, a ferry, or planning around the weather. In smaller communities, there may not be a dementia-specific program nearby at all.
Yet those same communities demonstrate one of Alaska's greatest strengths: people know how to show up for one another.
Throughout my years working with families across Alaska, I have seen just how powerful community can be. I have watched neighbors check on neighbors, family members rearrange their lives to care for someone they love, senior centers become gathering places, and communities find creative ways to keep older Alaskans connected.
Those experiences have reminded me that supporting someone living with dementia is not only about providing care. It is also about protecting their place within their family, their community, and the life they have built.
One of the most important things I have learned from families across Alaska is to keep seeing the person, not just the diagnosis.
Whether someone lives in Anchorage or in a small community hundreds of miles away, they still want the same things all of us want: to be included, to contribute, to be surrounded by people who know them, and to know they still matter.
That idea shapes many of ARA's programs and partnerships across Alaska. Programs such as the Forget Me Not Chorus and Memory Café create opportunities for people living with dementia and their families to participate without worrying about whether a forgotten name, repeated question, or change in ability will be misunderstood.
That kind of connection has value far beyond a single program or event.
Imagine what our communities could look like if a dementia diagnosis did not gradually push someone to the margins. What if our workplaces, churches, senior centers, schools, neighborhoods, businesses, and community organizations became more comfortable welcoming and including people experiencing cognitive change?
Sometimes inclusion is remarkably simple.
It can mean continuing to extend the invitation, even if someone needs a little more help participating. It can mean slowing down a conversation instead of ending it. It can mean sitting together even when words are harder to find. It can mean asking what someone can still do rather than assuming what they cannot.
It can also mean supporting the caregiver standing beside them.
There are difficult realities associated with dementia, and we should never minimize them. Families may experience profound changes, grief, uncertainty, and new responsibilities as the disease progresses. There will be hard days.
But those hard days do not have to become the entirety of someone's life.
There can still be music.
There can still be laughter.
There can still be friendship, purpose, recognition, and moments that become treasured memories for the people who share them.
Most importantly, there is still a person who deserves to be seen.
Dementia may change the way someone communicates with the world, but it does not change their need to belong to it.
Perhaps one of the greatest things we can do as neighbors, friends, family members, and fellow Alaskans is make sure there continues to be a place for them beside us.
If you or someone you love is navigating Alzheimer's disease or another dementia, you do not have to navigate it alone. ARA provides education, support, care coordination, engagement opportunities, and resources for Alaskans across the state. Visit alzalaska.org or call 907-561-3313 to connect with our team.
Lisa Sauder is the CEO, Alzheimer's Resource Alaska
