The incurable dementia that strikes younger people

By Burt Constable
Daily Herald Editorial Columnist
Posted Thursday, May 24, 2007

Tragedy may be looming, but love set up camp long ago in this Schaumburg home.

The simple pleasure of letting Mary Beth, his wife of 34 years, know how he feels about her is something Steve Riedner cherishes.

“How many more opportunities am I going to have to tell her, ‘I love you’?” Riedner says, hinting at the sad silence in their forecast.

“I’m going to know anyway,” his wife says.

A critical thinker with strong opinions, Riedner has contributed to several of my columns over the years. When moments of confusion and being tongue-tied became more frequent in his mid-50s, Riedner chalked it up as “a sign of getting old.”

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