Paul Shemella on Learning to Care for a Spouse With Alzheimer’s Without Fighting Her Reality

Paul Shemella had spent much of his adult life in environments that rewarded discipline, preparation, and decisive action.

He was a Navy SEAL, later taught at the Naval Postgraduate School, and built a career around understanding difficult problems well enough to respond to them. None of that prepared him for what happened when his wife, Lena, began changing.

She had been a scholar of literature, fiercely independent and intellectually engaged. As Alzheimer’s progressed, Shemella initially responded to her behavior as though he were still dealing with the same adult partner making choices he could reason through.

That became one of the hardest lessons of caregiving.

“I started yelling,” he says. “And that’s the worst thing you can do.”

Correcting Someone Can Make Care Harder

Before Lena received a formal diagnosis, Shemella noticed changes he did not understand. She became withdrawn. She hid her purse because she feared someone would take it. She stopped taking medication. At times she spoke about seeing her mother, who had died decades earlier.

Shemella’s instinct was to correct her.

When Lena talked about her mother, he reminded her that her mother was dead. When she resisted bathing or medication, he tried persuasion, pressure, and sometimes anger.

He now sees those responses as attempts to force Lena back into a reality she could no longer consistently inhabit.

A counselor with experience in dementia care helped him change his approach. She introduced him to what are sometimes called therapeutic fibs, small departures from literal truth intended to reduce distress rather than win an argument.

The idea initially ran against his instincts.

Eventually, however, Shemella learned that caregiving was less about proving what was true than understanding what Lena was experiencing in that moment.

That became especially important when he decided they needed to leave California and move to Houston, where his sister could help. Lena had lived much of her adult life in California, but Shemella feared he would eventually be unable to care for her there by himself.

Rather than repeatedly explain a permanent move she might resist or forget, he told her they were going on a trip and could return when the vacation was over.

By the time they reached Arizona, he says, she had stopped asking when they were going back.

Accepting Help Was Part of Caring for Her

Shemella initially believed he could continue caring for Lena in an apartment with family support and outside help.

That arrangement lasted only a few months.

As her condition progressed, he moved her into memory care, a decision that can carry enormous emotional and financial weight for families. Shemella describes the facility not simply as a place providing medical supervision, but as a residential community structured around safety, hygiene, stimulation, routine, and human connection.

He visits Lena daily. His sister visits at another time of day.

Lena now uses a wheelchair and can no longer speak, but she still smiles. She enjoys simple experiences such as petting the dog when Shemella brings it to see her.

“I live from one smile to the next,” he says.

That shift in perspective has changed what Shemella considers a successful day. Earlier in their marriage, connection rested on conversation, shared memories, travel, and the intellectual life they built together. Now it may last only a few minutes and require almost no words.

The relationship is different, but he does not describe it as empty.

Caregiving Gave Him a New Purpose

Writing became one way for Shemella to make sense of the experience.

After writing academic books and later fiction inspired partly by his military career, he turned to memoir. Into the Mist: An Alzheimer’s Journey follows Lena’s decline alongside his own education as a caregiver, including the mistakes he wishes he had understood sooner.

He and his sister also established the Lindella Foundation using money Lena had saved, supporting causes she cared about, including isolated seniors, vulnerable children, and abused animals.

For Shemella, that work has become part of surviving caregiving without allowing it to consume the meaning of his own life.

He wants other caregivers to understand the practical lessons, but he is equally concerned with something less procedural.

Caregiving, he says, contains moments of grief that cannot be fixed. It can also contain affection, humor, tenderness, and purpose.

The task is no longer to bring Lena back to the life they once had. It is to accompany her through the life that remains.

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