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In 2016, Sky Yardley, then 66, was diagnosed with early stage Alzheimer’s disease, an incurable and fatal condition. Sky and his wife, Jane Dwinell, decided to face Alzheimer’s in their own way. The Vermont couple began blogging and speaking about Sky’s increasing dementia in an effort to reduce stigma about the disease. Their blog was called Alzheimer’s Canyon, which was Sky’s term for a place with “no trails, no landmarks, nothing.” Yardley and Dwinell talked about their Alzheimer’s journey on the Vermont Conversation in 2017.
Alzheimer’s disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S. and the leading cause of dementia. One in three seniors dies with Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia. According to the Vermont chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association, more than 13,000 Vermonters have Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia, and more than 25,000 friends and family are providing care.
Yardley and Dwinell, who were together for 36 years, movingly chronicled Sky’s decline until his death in February 2021. Jane Dwinell has now published this real-time journal in a new book, “Alzheimer’s Canyon: One Couples Reflections on Living with Dementia,” posthumously co-written with her late husband.
Jane Dwinell is a retired nurse, freelance writer and Unitarian Universalist minister. Her 1992 book, “Birth Stories: Mystery, Power and Creation,” described her experience as a labor and delivery nurse at Gifford Hospital in Randolph. Sky Yardley was a family mediator.
Dwinell said that publicly chronicling his illness “was all Sky’s idea. He wanted to do what he could to erase the stigma of dementia. … He wanted to meet other people with dementia to be able to talk about it.”
Friends and family often do not know how to respond when a loved one receives a life-changing diagnosis.
“Don’t give them advice. Don’t leave them, and just be a good listener,” Dwinell said. “Some of our friends and family kind of fell away, and I’m grateful for the ones who stuck around.”
Sky Yardley said on The Vermont Conversation in 2017 that Alzheimer’s taught him to “pay attention to the present. The only thing we have is the present, which is something that I think all humans could benefit from.”