I visit my mother often now. She’s eighty-nine as I write this. Her Alzheimer’s is advancing, but she still knows who I am. Dementia has taken so much from her, but it’s returned her loving soul, uncompromised by the challenges of everyday life. Every nurse, every doctor who treats her, comments unprompted on how sweet she is, and funny, too; they also bask in this unvarnished version of her spirit. “I won’t be able to say it for much longer,” she tells me urgently, every time we speak, “so I want you to remember how much I love you.”
