In the beginning...

There are only two of us and my sister lives in another state. Like most we tried ignoring that mom was getting older. She still worked, had a friend she went to dinner with a couple times a month and when she called we knew we needed to clear our schedule because she'd keep us on the phone for a while.

But then she got sick on me - it was some sort of stomach virus - and she landed in the hospital then a rehab center. Since she lost so much time at her job and she was old enough to retire that was what she did. She still met with her friends, and had a group she was involved with. We didn't worry.

Then the conversations on the phone got shorter. We started noticing she wasn't bathing properly and her cloths were soiled when we did see her. My sister and I started to push her to move in with me, which she refused. She didn't want to lose her independence.

Now understand that my mom hasn't been that steady on her feet for a while. She took a spill and we went to the emergency room to be sure she didn't have a concussion. That's when I found out she had had a minor stroke.

That made us push even more. Mom still refused to move in. It took her failing a driving test to make her do it.

Being around her all the time made it obvious that there was a problem. Things she should have remembered, like the name of her grandmother, was gone. She couldn't remember how to use a remote, yet she had one in her apartment that she had used all the time. I saw enough to make me want to have her tested. The diagnosis was Dementia.

Now I know I wasn't imaging things.