The opportunities open to individuals with dementia to describe their experience and thereby influence their treatment and care have hitherto been limited by a perception of assumed inability and incompetence, rendering such contributions as invalid or at best unreliable. Recently, more attention has been focused on the value of finding an appropriate means of harnessing such experiences and examining what can be learned from listening to subjective accounts. This paper presents findings from a qualitative study of the experiences of 20 individuals diagnosed with dementia. In the absence of a shared diagnosis, however, these individuals contextualized their experiences in the normality of old age. Their accounts offer insight into the impact and frustrations of living with a failing memory and the challenges of the aging process, the meaning they attached to what was happening to them, and how they attempted to cope with the assaults on their self-esteem brought about by a growing sense of failure, incompetence and letting down those closest to them.