Losing Mum Twice: My Experience with Alzheimer’s

There are some losses that don’t come all at once. They arrive slowly and quietly, stealing pieces of the person you love until the shape of them begins to change. That was my experience with Alzheimer’s. My mum had it, and I watched her slip away one moment at a time.

At first, it was little things—repeating stories, forgetting words mid-sentence, losing things, and not remembering where her car was parked. We tried to believe it was just normal ageing. But deep down, I knew something was shifting. Over time, her language faded more and more. She began to lose track of time, of days, of where she was. And eventually, she lost track of who I was.

That part was the hardest. There’s a particular ache in being forgotten by the person who gave you life. She would look at me with a blankness that broke me. Some days she didn’t know who I was. Other days, she thought I was a nurse or a long-lost relative. I tried to meet her wherever she was, to hold her hand through the fog.

She paced a lot. She did things that were out of character. There was meaning in those things for her, even if I couldn’t understand it.

So I learned to stop correcting and start observing. I looked for small ways to connect, even when words were no longer enough.

Losing someone to Alzheimer’s feels like a long goodbye. You grieve while they’re still here. You prepare yourself again and again, and somehow, when the end comes, it still breaks you. I lost my mum twice—first to the disease, and then when her body finally let go.