Memories are a funny thing.  They can provide reference, build knowledge, make us sad and bring comfort. We can try to push some out of our minds and we can hang on to those memories we want to relive. They weave us into who we are or help us make a new person out of the old, if we are so inclined. Memories can help define us or change us; it’s mostly of our choosing.

Until my mother developed dementia, I never really thought about how important memories are in making a life.  I just took for granted they would always be there,  creating the fabric of my family and my world.  I always knew I would wrap myself in those shared memories with my loves ones and they would warm and comfort me throughout my life. One day bring me happily into old age, God willing.

I am sure my mom always believed the memories she created with her husband, her four children, family and friends would bring her that same comfort. She must have imagined evenings of laughter and reminiscence, secrets revealed and wisdom shared.  I know she would have imagined that for her life because I lived those memories with her, right up until the time she could not remember anymore. Right up until today, the day my mom finally forgot who I am, forever.

To be clear, I know it didn’t really come about in just one day. My Mom has been forgetting who I am intermittently for over a year now.  Most mornings she would know my name, but by evening time I would be a face she fondly related to or a stranger she wished would leave.  But for the most part,  I could count on a moments of each day where my mother knew me, said my name and loved me still.

But in recent weeks, her dementia has taken those precious bits out of each day. They were my favorite ones, where even if she were angry with me she knew to whom she was directing her anger. She still remembered who I was in her fabric of life, even if a bit frayed around the edges.

Today I had to finally accept that will happen no more. It has been many weeks of my mother no longer knowing my name, and rarely remembering I am her daughter. She is mostly pleasant still, is usually happy to see me and on some level knows I am family or important to her. But she has stopped using my name. She stopped even asking about me, or any of her children for that matter. Dementia has picked at the fabric of her life and continues to create the unravel.

And so today I cried.  Not so much for my loss, as I have been practicing losing my mother for many years now.  But I cried for my Mother, for her loss.  How cruel a disease to have taken from her that blanket of memories she had so carefully woven throughout her life.  The ones she planned to keep, the memories she grew fond of and kept with love, to surround her as she grew old. The memories that would give her joy, spark recollections of shared experiences, provide the framework of all she had accomplished, all those she had loved and the gift of knowing all that love returned. The familiar that she could wrap around her, that would bring her comfort in her old age.

Dementia continues to unravel her life, picking away stich by stich, memory by memory and I am powerless to stop the deconstruction. All I can do is try to wrap her in the familiar, in the memories I know she loved and brought her joy and hope in that she can find warmth and comfort, even if she may never again know my name.