GLENDALE, AZ — Every third Tuesday of the month, a room at the Foothills Recreation and Aquatic Center in Glendale transforms into something rare for families living with dementia: A place where they don't have to explain themselves.
The Memory Café, launched in 2023 by the Dementia Friends Glendale Action Team, welcomes people living with memory loss and their care partners for 90 minutes of community, conversation and cognitive engagement.
"We formed a group called Dementia Friends Glendale about six years ago in collaboration with the city of Glendale with the support of the mayor and the chamber and Banner Sun Health Research Institute and Alzheimer's Institute to create a space for people who are living with dementia and their care partners to get support, to find a sense of community, and to have access to resources to help them through this journey of living with dementia," said Jeannie Grates, action team lead for Dementia Friends Glendale and client business development manager for Cypress Home Care Solutions.
How it works
Each session begins with the full group socializing together, sharing coffee and catching up with familiar faces. About 15 to 20 minutes in, the group splits. People living with dementia stay for a life enrichment and engagement program while their caregivers, spouses, neighbors, and family members move to a separate room for a private support session led by a social worker.
Grates says between 35 and 60 people attend each month.
"We try to help relieve them of those stresses and help them to find humor and just validate their loved one — that is just the best, best way to get through the day," Grates said.
The program is staffed entirely by volunteers from local senior and community services organizations.
One family's story
Lynn Graham Bennett, who goes by LG, has been attending the Memory Café since shortly after her husband Kenneth Bennett was diagnosed with dementia at age 58, four years ago.
Kenneth, a Navy veteran who served 20 years and later worked for the Department of Defense for 22 years, began showing signs that something was wrong during a routine medical appointment.
"The doctor would ask a question, and he would just turn and say, 'ask my wife,'" LG recalled. "After the third time, the doctor looked at me and asked if he had ever been tested."
The diagnosis came months later. LG says finding the Memory Café changed everything.
"This journey is a very interesting, sad, and mean, but we know we have each other and together we can get through this," she said.
Today, Kenneth attends a day program during the week, which LG says has given her breathing room to handle daily tasks without worry. But the Memory Café remains a cornerstone of their support system.
"I try to keep things as normal as possible because I know one day it won't be, but until then we're just gonna be as normal as everybody else," LG said. "He's truly the love of my life."
Breaking the stigma
Grates says dementia is often misunderstood, in part because of the stigma surrounding it.
"Dementia is an umbrella term which has beneath it over 100 forms of cognitive impairment or brain disease, Alzheimer's being the most prevalent," she said. "It's not someone that is senile or crazy, it truly is a disease, and there's currently no cure."
She describes the experience of caregiving as a kind of ambiguous loss, watching a loved one change slowly over time.
"You're losing that person slowly," Grates said. "Oftentimes it turns into where they don't even remember who their spouse is or their children, so helping them to know they're not alone" is at the heart of what the Memory Café does.
Where and when
Glendale's Memory Café meets the third Tuesday of each month from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at the Foothills Recreation and Aquatic Center, located at 5600 W. Union Hills Drive in Glendale.
Several other Memory Cafés are also available across the West Valley for families seeking support closer to home.
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