By: Christiana Best-Giacomini
May 12, 2026
Mother’s Day 2026 has given me pause.
I have been a mother for over thirty years, and my mother is still alive — physically present, her body in the room with us. But she is, at the same time, not with us at all. Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease have done what nothing else could. Not diabetes, not cancer, not high blood pressure, not addiction, none of the ailments that so often claim people by seventy touched her. My mother was one of the strongest people I have ever known. She reached that milestone birthday in remarkable health, then retired, and slowly settled into a quieter, more inactive life.
The one complaint she had carried for years before turning seventy was knee pain. After knee surgery, what should have been a routine fix, her memory began to slip. It never returned to where it had been. Instead it kept retreating, year by year, until parts of her body followed: first her speech, then her ability to walk, then her words altogether.
When your memory leaves you, when your speech goes silent, when your body stops obeying, you become entirely dependent on others. You become a passenger in your own life. Imagine living that way for nearly ten years. Then imagine being the person forced to watch it happen, to watch your mother disappear in front of you, slowly and without mercy.
Last month, after visiting with my mother, I had dinner with two friends in Westchester, at a lovely restaurant overlooking the water. It was idyllic, the kind of place my mother used to love. And that is the thing about beautiful places now: they carry her in them. Some of my most vivid adult memories involve my mother and restaurants. New ones, beloved ones, adventurous ones. We traveled together to Westchester, the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, eating food from every corner of the world. When she wasn’t dining out with me, she was taking cruises around the world on her own terms.
At dinner that evening, one of my friends grew reflective. She shared how devastating it is for her to watch me visit my mother every two weeks, to sit beside a woman who no longer recognizes me, who may not even know I am there. Her words weighed on me. I felt it too, which is part of why those visits are so hard for me.
Then my friend leaned forward and said: You should tell her it’s okay to let go. Tell her she can go.
I was stunned into silence.
I sat with it for a moment, her words, her face, the genuine love beneath them. I know who she is. I know she meant no harm. So I let it pass, right there at that table by the water. I let it go, the way she suggested I tell my mother to do.
But on the drive home, three hours in traffic, a long corridor of highway and dark thoughts, I couldn’t let it go at all.
What I felt was not one thing. It was many things at once, layered and contradictory, the way grief always is.
I felt anger first. The sharp, protective kind. How dare she. I have poured myself into caring for my mother. I have shown up. I have not looked away. And here was someone suggesting that I guide my mother toward the door and close it behind her.
Then, underneath the anger, something I didn’t want to admit: understanding. Because it is true. The way my mother exists now is not what I would call living. I would not want it for myself. And I know, that if you had asked her before any of this began, she would have said the same thing. Especially not like this. Especially not for ten years.
And yet.
Do we truly know she is not still in there, trapped inside a body that has betrayed her? Does she feel nothing? Understand nothing? Know nothing of the people sitting beside her, speaking her name?
Somewhere along the way, the relationship between mother and daughter quietly shifted. I became the one reminding her to eat, the one helping her body move, the one watching over her safety, her comfort, her dignity. There are moments when it feels less like I am caring for my mother and more like I am caring for my child, except this child once carried me, protected me, taught me how to move through the world. That reversal carries its own kind of grief.
And still, some stubborn part of me keeps hoping for recovery. Even now. Even after all these years. A clearer look in her eyes. A returned word. A moment of recognition. I find myself searching her face for signs that she might somehow come back to me. Hope lives alongside grief in ways that do not make sense to anyone who has not lived through this kind of loss.
Because that is what dementia does to the people who love someone through it: it asks you to mourn and care for them at the very same time.
This morning I called to wish her a Happy Mother’s Day. On the other end of the line, through the silence, she made a sound, a low, guttural sound from somewhere deep.
I have been thinking about that sound ever since.
Was it recognition? Was it her, somewhere underneath everything, saying I hear you? Was it her wishing me a Happy Mother’s Day in the only language she has left?
I don’t know. I may never know. But I am choosing to believe it was her, still here, still reaching, still my mother, speaking to me in the only way she can.
This is what no one tells you about losing a parent to dementia: you grieve them while they are still alive. You miss them while they are in the room. You carry the weight of loving someone who is both present and disappearing at the same time.
And on the days set aside to honor mothers, you find yourself holding all of it at once, the mother you had, the mother you are now caring for like a child, and the mother you are still fighting to reach.
(Dr Christiana Best is an Associate Professor at the University of Saint Joseph, Connecticut)
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