When our mom first started acting “odd,” we had no idea what was happening. Her words and behaviors felt confusing, sometimes even frustrating. At first, I didn’t think it could be dementia—I thought maybe she wasn’t interested in me or my life anymore. I took it personally, and that hurt.
I can still remember one particular moment. I was upset, and I blurted out something like, “Would you even care if something terrible happened to me?” She searched for words, reaching for emotions she couldn’t quite express, but she managed to get out: “I do love you, Lauren.”
I carried guilt from that day until we finally received her diagnosis: Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD). Suddenly, the puzzle pieces made sense. What looked like indifference was actually the disease quietly taking hold—stealing her interest in the very things that once lit up her life.
Of course, that didn’t make it easier. Like many families, we endured the long stretch of doctors’ appointments, heartbreaking decisions, and painful transitions. Along the way, I began to understand the depth of this disease—and, in many ways, my “new” mom.
She was still the woman who once sat with me on the front porch as I gushed about my first trip to Italy, who took me shopping for wedding dresses and shoes long before I had a fiancé, and who would predict (correctly) that Anthony was going to marry me someday. She was still the woman with the contagious laugh that filled a room—so contagious that I would shamelessly moon her just to hear it one more time.
But as dementia changed her, our roles shifted. She became more like my child than my mom. And while that was devastating, it also invited a new kind of love into my life: a nurturing, patient, fiercely compassionate love I didn’t know I had in me.
Caring for her taught me patience. It taught me acceptance. It showed me that love can change form and still remain the same at its core. And while I would have given anything in the world for her not to be sick, I also know the lessons she gave me during that time were invaluable.
Now that she has passed, I find myself holding both grief and gratitude. Grief for all that dementia took from her, from me, from our family. But gratitude for the ways she shaped me, even in her illness—for the chance to walk beside her through her journey, for the laughter we still shared, and for the reminder that love is never diminished, even when memory fades.
She will always be, to me, the most beautiful woman—inside and out. Dementia changed her, yes, but it never defined her. And it never erased the love between us.
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Midwestern Summertime Nostalgia