The Gradual Loss of a Parent

On October 17, 2023, I lost my mom to unexpected heart failure. While I navigate my way through the shock, grief and pain of her sudden passing, I recognize that I have actually been gradually losing her over the past 15 years.

Just to preface, in the pre-internet era we used to joke that we needed to give my mom a lobotomy because she seemingly knew everything. If anyone ever had a question, the standard reply was “ask mom”. And she, without doubt, would provide the correct answer. Occasionally we would double check her responses with the hope of catching her out - it never happened.

The first time I noticed my mom’s cognitive decline, it could have and was attributed to a random lapse in memory. But then those lapses started becoming more frequent. Initially, I attributed them to her exhaustion from caring for my disabled father. She missed scheduled (or showed up at unscheduled) appointments, for which she always had an excuse and was often upset with whoever made the appointment for “misbooking”. Mom missed planned events with family and friends, again insisting that she had written the date on the calendar and the other party was clearly mistaken. She misplaced objects for which she often had hilarious stories as to their whereabouts once we found them. My mom forgot entire conversations, which sometimes worked in my favour as I was able to re-engage differently if the first round hadn’t gone well! Things started getting scary when she called me panicking because she could not remember how she got somewhere, didn’t recognize landmarks (she has lived in the same city most of her life) and could not remember how to get home. She began missing the appointments that mattered, such as going to the doctor. Mom forgot names, how people were associated with one another in our family and then began forgetting friends and family altogether. I had to constantly remind myself that my mom was no longer “my mom” and that her function was the result of the horrible disease she had developed.

When I reread the way I have described my mom’s decline, what stands out the most for me is the use of the prefix “mis” and the word “forgot”. The prefix “mis” is defined by Oxford Dictionary as “bad or wrong; badly or wrongly”. My mom’s actions are not deserving of that definition. She did her utmost to continue living her very full life and nothing about that was bad or wrong. Rather than using a negatively associated prefix, I prefer the synonym for the word “forgot” which is “missed”. Did my mom forget and/or miss events in her life? Absolutely. None of that was with malintent, nor was it bad or wrong. Mom was simply declining and I was gradually losing the best mom I could have ever hoped for. I love you and I miss you mom, every single day.