A wedding gift foretold our lives in ways that Dick and I could not have imagined. Harry Dodge, the groomsman, gave us a pine box with dovetailed corners. He’d carved the story of Rapunzel on its sides and lid.
The tale was a mirror of our marriage. Themes such as song, desire, blindness, and revelation threaded their way through that story and ours. In “Rapunzel,” I’d found “a soul companion,” as Françoise Cloutier, a Jungian analyst, puts it. Cloutier explains that our soul companion reassures us we’re not alone and our journey has meaning.
“Rapunzel” is about much more than a rope of hair, a tower, and a witch. It reminds us that our life stories include trials and transformations. It reminds us that love asks much of us.
Anne-Marie Erickson
Featured image: Harry Dodge. Raspberry: Revelation, 1981. Author’s collection
Love in the Time of Dementia 
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