byChrisWhite – 2024

In September of 2024, my mother left us. She was 82 years old, and her passing was not the kind of tragic affair that stops a small town in its tracks. No police sirens screamed, no skid marks marred the pavement. It wasn’t a calamity you’d see splashed across the evening news. It was quieter than that, but somehow worse, dementia took her.

Before it came for her, I’d thought of dementia as something distant, the kind of misfortune that happened to other people, other families. I’d heard the stories, seen the films, but it wasn’t until it crept into our home, into her, that I understood its true nature. Dementia isn’t just a disease; it’s a thief, and a patient one at that. If I were to compare it to a tactic of war, it’d be Lingchi, the ancient Chinese torture known as the death of a thousand cuts. But unlike Lingchi, dementia isn’t illegal. No, it works freely, slicing away at the mind until what’s left is something both familiar and foreign, a face you know, a soul you don’t.

My mother was brilliant, the kind of smart that sneaks up on you. With an IQ of 160, she moved through life with a quiet, commanding intelligence that showed itself equally in the sharpness of her words and the precision of her math. In the 1990s, she worked as a comptroller for a manufacturing company in Nashville. When her company was bought by a corporation in Quebec, they required she relocate to Canada to keep her job. She said, “Nope.” They sweetened the pot with a raise, then a higher one still. She shook her head. By the end of it, they offered to fly her to and from Canada every week, just to keep her on board. For over a decade, she worked that way, Monday to Friday in Canada, weekends at home. A company doesn’t go to such lengths unless they know they need you.

So when she began to lose her memory, she noticed before any of us did. I’ll never forget the way she’d stop mid-sentence, her thoughts vanishing like vapor, and rather than stumbling, she’d simply go silent. She didn’t want us to see her faltering. It took us a while to catch on, to notice the gaps where her brilliance used to shine.

What haunts me most is her foresight. Long before the disease ever touched her, she’d told us, “I’d kill myself before I’d let you kids see me like that. I never want to be a burden.” And yet, there I was, sitting with her in the memory care unit, watching her smile at me with a hollow kindness, as if to say, I don’t know who you are, but I sure do love this candy. It was a special kind of heartbreak, watching her become the very thing she’d sworn she’d never allow.

There’s no preparing for that. Dementia doesn’t announce itself with a grand gesture. It sneaks in, piece by piece, so slowly you almost don’t notice until one day you wake up and realize the person you love is gone. The cruelest part? They’re still sitting right there, smiling at you, even as you mourn them.

When my brother died, I thought I’d seen the worst of grief. I threw myself into the logistics of his passing, the paperwork, the arrangements. My background in police work made me believe I was prepared to face it head-on. I wasn’t. Grief has a way of blindsiding you, and no amount of training can armor you against the loss of someone you love.

This time, I wasn’t the strong one. My sister Cindy bore the weight of it, and thank God for her. She stood tall when I couldn’t, carried the burdens I was too weak to shoulder. Being the baby of the family, and my mother’s outspoken favorite, I leaned on Cindy in ways I’ll never be able to repay. She let me grieve without the pressure of being the responsible one, and for that, I’ll always be grateful.

Dementia is a thug, a brute that doesn’t just take—it mangles. It doesn’t give you the dignity of a clean goodbye. Instead, it stretches the loss out, warping it until it’s unrecognizable. You grieve in pieces, bit by bit, as the person you love fades away before your eyes. And the worst part? They’re still there, smiling, reaching for your hand, completely unaware of the storm raging inside you.

I remember sitting with Mama, watching her as she toyed with the wrapper of a chocolate candy I’d brought her. Her hands, once so capable, trembled as she tried to open it. I thought of all the times those hands had cared for me, brushing my hair, packing my lunch, pointing out the constellations on summer nights. Now they fumbled with something as simple as a piece of candy.

I thought about the woman she’d been, her quiet defiance, her unwavering strength. I thought about how proud she would’ve been to know she’d raised children who loved her enough to sit by her side, even when she didn’t know who we were. And I thought about how devastated she would’ve been to see herself like this, reduced to fragments of a person, her brilliance dimmed, her independence gone.

In the end, dementia didn’t just take my mother, it took pieces of all of us. But it also gave us something in return. It gave us the chance to love her unconditionally, to sit with her in her confusion and fear and offer her the comfort of our presence. It gave us the opportunity to honor her, not for who she had been, but for who she was in those final days, a woman who, even in her fragility, taught us what it means to endure.

Mama’s gone now, and the world feels a little dimmer without her. But in the quiet moments, when I think about her, I try to remember the way she smiled at me, even when she didn’t know my name. I try to hold on to the love that outlived her memory, the love that dementia couldn’t touch.

And I hope, wherever she is, she knows that she was never a burden. She was our mother, and that was enough.