When Your Spouse Plays with Toys Now: A Dementia Partner's Story

I never thought I'd be the person in the toy aisle, crying. But there I was, holding a set of brightly colored building blocks, trying to figure out if my husband — sixty-eight years old, former high school history teacher, the man who remembered every student's name — would like them. He would. That was the part that broke me. Not that he'd lost something. That something new was still possible, and it looked like this.

I was an LPN for forty-two years. I've seen dementia up close. I've held the hands of patients who didn't know where they were. I've explained to families what was happening and what to expect. I thought I understood this disease. I didn't. Not really. Not until it was Karl. Not until the man who made me laugh every single day for forty-four years started looking at me like I was someone he almost recognized. The medical knowledge helped — I knew which behaviors were the disease and which were the medication, I knew how to redirect, I knew the difference between sundowning and pain. But the medical knowledge didn't prepare me for the toy aisle. It didn't prepare me for the grief of watching your person become someone simpler, gentler, and in ways I wasn't ready for, more childlike.

He wants me to read to him now. He carries a stuffed dog around the house and talks to it. I put a little stuffed animal next to his picture — I've been doing that for years, a little bunny for spring, a duck for summer, a fox for fall. Now he notices them. He picks them up. He arranges them. The first time I saw him do it, I had to leave the room. Not because I was ashamed. Because I was suddenly face-to-face with a grief I'd been managing from a distance, and the distance had collapsed.

The Strangeness of Playing with Someone You've Loved for Forty-Four Years

The hardest part to explain to people who haven't lived it is the whiplash. One moment you're discussing medication schedules and power of attorney with a doctor, using all the clinical language you learned in nursing school. The next moment, you're sitting on the living room floor building a block tower with a grown man who giggles when it falls. Your brain doesn't know which mode to be in. Nurse? Wife? Caregiver? Playmate? All of them at once. None of them quite fit. The nurse in me wants to document the behavior. The wife in me wants to cry because this is not the man who proposed at a bar forty-four years ago, the man who waited until my girlfriends had all collected their free drinks and then introduced himself like a gentleman. The caregiver in me — the one who lives in this house and hasn't slept through the night in months — just wants to know if the blocks will keep him calm for twenty more minutes so I can drink my coffee before it goes cold.

What I've learned — what nobody told me and I had to figure out on my own, one day at a time, one block tower at a time — is that play works. Not as a cure. There's no cure for what Karl has, and I'm not looking for one anymore. What I'm looking for is a bridge. A way to reach him when words don't work and conversations are impossible and the man who used to debate history with his students can't follow a simple question. When his language started going, the blocks stayed. When he couldn't follow a conversation, he could follow a picture book. When he couldn't tell me he loved me anymore, he could hand me the stuffed dog as a gift, over and over, and I learned to hear what that meant. Karl was always a gift-giver. He used to bring me coffee in bed every Sunday. The stuffed dog is the same language, just translated. The grammar is different. The meaning hasn't changed.

I'm not losing him to the childlike things. I'm finding him there — in the spaces language has already left, in the gestures that don't need words. The blocks are where he still is. I just had to be willing to meet him there.

What Actually Works (What I've Figured Out So Far)

After watching and trying and failing and trying again, here's what's earned a permanent spot in our house. None of this is medical advice — I'm a retired nurse, and I know the difference between clinical guidance and lived experience. This is the second thing.

1. 1.Building blocks — the large kind, easy to grip. No small pieces. No instructions. Just stacking and knocking down. The repetition is soothing and the tactile feedback grounds something I can't explain. Get the kind made for toddlers. They're easier for hands that don't work like they used to.
2. 2.Coloring books with simple designs. Avoid the intricate adult coloring books — those are for focused brains, and Karl's brain doesn't focus like that anymore. Look for chunky lines, familiar objects (animals, flowers, houses), and pages that don't require decisions. Crayons, not colored pencils. Easier grip, brighter payoff.
3. 3.Picture books without plots. Coffee table books of landscapes, animals, or art work better than narratives. He doesn't need to follow a story. He needs something beautiful to look at while I sit next to him. The sitting next to him is the point. The picture is just an excuse to be still together.
4. 4.Stuffed animals with texture. Something soft, something with different fabrics. He runs his hands over them for hours. I think it's the sensory input his brain is craving — a kind of grounding that language used to provide and doesn't anymore. The dog is the favorite. It has floppy ears and beans in its paws.
5. 5.Music from his twenties. This isn't a toy, but it belongs on every list I'll ever make. The part of the brain that holds music is stubborn — it's one of the last things to go. Karl can't remember what he ate ten minutes ago, but he knows every word to the songs we danced to at our wedding. Every single word. I made a playlist. We listen every afternoon. Sometimes he sings. Those are the good days. The very good days.

What I'd Tell Someone at the Beginning of This

You are going to feel ridiculous. Buying toys for your adult spouse feels like a betrayal — like you're giving up on the person they were, like you're accepting a version of them that's diminished. You're not giving up. You're adapting. The toys are tools. They open doors that language has closed. They give you a way to be together when conversation isn't possible anymore. That's not surrender. That's love getting creative.

You are going to grieve in public, and it's going to be awkward. The toy aisle breakdown is real. The pitying looks from cashiers are real. The well-meaning friends who say 'at least he's still here' are real, and they mean well, and they don't understand. Find the people who do. Support groups. Online communities. The one friend who doesn't try to fix it — who just sits with you while you cry about building blocks and doesn't tell you to look on the bright side.

And this, maybe most of all: you are going to discover that play is not just for children. It's for anyone who needs to connect without words. It's for anyone whose brain is rewiring itself in ways they didn't choose and can't control. It's for you, too — the exhausted partner who needs permission to stop being the manager and just be present. The blocks are for both of you. You're allowed to enjoy them. You're allowed to find moments of joy in the middle of the grief. The joy doesn't cancel the grief. The grief doesn't cancel the joy. They share the room. That's just how this works.

— Lydia

About the Author

Lydia is a retired LPN, a military wife, and a widow who cared for her husband Karl through dementia. She lives in California, where she maintains a rotating seasonal collection of stuffed animals around Karl's photograph. Her great-granddaughter recently taught her about clip-on plushies, and she hasn't looked back.