If you’re like me and have a spouse with dementia, there are some aspects of the encroaching disease that the children of the affected don’t have to deal with.

Weaning ourselves from sleeping together. I don’t want to, but it’s becoming a necessity for our health.

Over the past year or so, Jim has been having more frequent dreams. Like his conversations, many seem to be on repeat. He tosses and turns and talks or hollers out loud at the people in his dreams, which fractures my sleep, leaving me less alert to care for him during the day. Something has to give.

To help, I usually stay awake a little longer than he does. This is two-fold. It gives me a few minutes to myself to unwind before bed and it gives him a better chance to fall into a deep sleep. Just after I crawl into bed he often will have a big belly laugh at something in his dreams. It always makes me smile.

Last night was a repeat of a dream he recently started having frequently. Only this time, his enactment of it was more forceful than before. He yelled at whoever was in his dream and told them to move over because he was about to fall off the mattress.

While in reality, it was me clinging to the edge of the bed, with him in the middle, with his arms and legs tangled around me. Moving wasn’t something I could easily do.

He continued to swear at the person in his dream, so I extracted myself and took advantage of the opportunity to get him (and me) used to sleeping alone. I walked down the hall and curled up on the bed in the spare room.

He was very apologetic when he came to find me an hour later. He had no recollection of kicking me out of bed then or this morning when he casually asked how I slept like he does everyday.

I can’t be mad at him for something he doesn’t know he’s doing. It doesn’t help me sleep any better.