THE WIND PHONE
Losing My Mom One Memory at A Time
Helping a loved one through dementia
As my mother struggled to hold onto her memories, her mind, and her soul, she would slip away a little more each day. It’s an awful thing to watch happen to someone who had always symbolized strength, love, and humor.
I cried for days after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. We all know we will have to say goodbye to our parents one day, but I believed this was the cruelest way to lose her.
When I first returned home to visit, she was still in the earliest stage of the disease — it had been eating away at my mother’s mind for years already. We only realized it when the signs and symptoms became impossible to hide for her and harder to ignore for us.
Her meticulously clean home now had dirt in the corners, dust bunnies under the furniture, and crumbs on the counter — all things she would never let slide in the past. It was easy for me to believe she was just letting go of her lifelong obsession, but she wasn’t doing it on purpose. It was a sign.
Everyone knows what happens to someone diagnosed with dementia. It is a slide into the unknown, robbing them of their spirit, their personality, their memories. Their life.
