Watching someone you love fade into dementia is slow and quiet and hard in ways you can’t prepare for. My mum’s in a care home now, somewhere in her mind I can’t reach. There’s no guidebook for this, just questions we all ask when dementia takes someone we love. This is about those questions and trying to make sense of what’s left when memory goes.
If you’re watching this happen to someone in your family, maybe these thoughts will help you feel less alone.
Table of Contents
When the Familiar Becomes Strange
I’ve never been big on taking photos, but I’m glad I have some of my mum. There’s one memory I carry from childhood that I hope stays with me: waiting outside school when the bell rang, watching her stand with the other mothers. She always stood out. Maybe she really was the most striking, or maybe she just made more effort than most. Either way, she was there, present and recognizable as the woman who raised me.
The last time we talked on the phone, she handed it to my dad mid-conversation. She was busy at the dinner table, slipping food to the dog. I heard my dad call her name in that tone you use when someone’s doing something they shouldn’t, disappointed but not angry.
That’s when I knew something was wrong. Without hearing that tone in his voice, I might have just assumed she’d put the phone down and gotten distracted. We’ve had dogs my whole life, all of them well-fed and loved. She never once fed them from the table.
Small things change first. During our calls, she’d ask how I was doing, then ask the exact same question a few minutes later. At first I thought she was just being her usual attentive self, checking in twice because we lived so far apart and didn’t talk often enough. Both of us busy with everyday life.
I didn’t see what was creeping in until it had already taken hold.
Have you noticed the early signs of dementia in someone you love? What made you finally realize something was wrong?
The Guardians Who Carry the Weight
My dad’s British, in his 80s now. Like most of his generation, he keeps that stiff upper lip. Talking about tender emotions isn’t something that comes naturally to him. That territory’s usually reserved for the more sensitive types.
But I understand him. He protected us from life’s sharp edges for as long as he could. He’s dealt with his own challenges too. A stroke took the use of his left arm years ago. All that exercise and staying trim didn’t spare him, but he adapted and stayed strong.
When my mum’s condition progressed, he took care of her at home until a doctor finally told him it was becoming too much. She’s in a care home now, getting professional care around the clock. The decision wasn’t easy, but it was necessary.
The care facility costs a fortune. There’s no relief for good people doing their best. For those of us watching from a distance, it’s a long, slow ache. The emotional weight of watching her fade gradually, combined with the financial strain, wears on everyone involved.
How do you know when it’s time to get professional help? What made that decision easier or harder for you?
The Silence of Sitting Beside Someone Who’s Gone
The care home is nearby, and my dad visits regularly. He told me he can only manage about 20 minutes at a time because seeing her like this really hurts.
She doesn’t respond to him. She sits quietly, seemingly somewhere else entirely, holding a soft toy for comfort. A small thing to hold onto, maybe, wherever she is now.
After everything he’s been through in his life, losing her this way feels like watching the final chapter approach without being able to stop it. He sits beside her during those brief visits, and I wonder if she knows he’s there. Does she recognize his presence on some level we can’t measure? Or has she gone somewhere else entirely, somewhere we can’t follow?
All I can do from this distance is love them both. Love my mum for who she was and whoever she is now. Love my dad for holding everything together through all of this.
When you sit with someone who has dementia, do you think they know you’re there?
Where Do They Go?
I think about my grandmother sometimes, my mum’s mother. When I was a teenager, I’d visit her in her final years. In her most vulnerable state, she’d stare out the window at what she described as a park. To the rest of us, there were only buildings. The park she said she was looking at was miles away. But whatever she saw seemed to bring her peace.
Who’s to say she didn’t really see it? And who’s to say my mum doesn’t experience something we can’t understand right now? Maybe dementia opens windows we can’t perceive, like those near-death experiences where people glimpse something beyond what we think is real.
Maybe that soft toy my mum holds is more than just comfort. Maybe it’s an anchor to something, or maybe the window in her room opens onto somewhere more peaceful than where the rest of us are standing.
What do you think people with dementia experience? Do they know we’re there, or have they already moved somewhere else?
What’s Left When Memory Fades
My mum used to raise PAT dogs, therapy dogs that visited kids in hospitals. It was her way of giving back, bringing comfort to children who needed it. The tables have turned now. She’s the one who needs comfort, and that small toy is what she has to hold onto.
Maybe being in a care home isn’t terrible if you have something familiar to hold or a view where you can lose yourself. Maybe someday we’ll understand dementia better, either through research or in whatever comes after this life, if anything does.
For now, watching this unfold is hard. There’s a price we pay for loving people, and this is part of it. All any of us can do is stay present, offer what comfort we can, and hope that somewhere inside, our loved ones find moments of peace.
I’m living in Japan right now, thousands of miles away from where this is happening. I expect to move back to the UK this year, and when I do, I’ll visit my mum and sit with her the way my dad does now. I don’t know what I’ll find when I get there, but I’ll be there.
Have you watched dementia take someone you love? How did you make sense of it, or did you just learn to sit with the questions that have no answers?
Share your thoughts below. I respond to every comment, and your experience often helps others more than mine does.
