She called me Mom again today.

“Mom, what should we do next? What do we still need to do?”

Her voice floated across the kitchen table, soft and earnest, like someone trying to find their footing in a room that suddenly feels bigger than they remember. And even though this isn’t the first time, it still catches me in that place between breath and heartbeat — the place where love and grief sit so close together they almost blur.

The word mom lands differently now.

It’s heavy and warm. The feeling is wrong… and somehow still right.

For a long time, I thought she was confusing our roles — mixing up names, memories, timelines. However, I understand now: she isn’t forgetting who I am. She’s forgetting who she has become.

She no longer holds the memory of her own age.

The Age She Remembers

In her mind, she isn’t someone in her eighties with a lifetime of stories etched into her skin. Rather, she is thirty-something — maybe forty — right in the middle of a life still unfolding. The version of herself who still had big plans, quick steps, and a mother of her own to call when the world felt too heavy.

There are moments when she catches her reflection in the mirror and hesitates, not out of vanity but out of dissonance. I’ve seen her tilt her head at the woman staring back, confused by features she doesn’t recognize. Because she isn’t expecting that face. She’s expecting youth and the world she remembers, not the one she’s standing in.

So, in these moments when she calls me Mom, it isn’t a mistake.

Instead, she is reaching for the person she believes should be right beside her at her age — the one who once made her feel safe, steady, and anchored. And right now, in this version of reality her brain is trying to piece together, that person is me.

The Daughter and the Mother

It’s a strange thing — to still want her to be my mom while becoming the very thing she is searching for.

To feel the ache of what’s slipping away and, at the same time, the unexpected sweetness of what rises up in its place.

Especially when she reaches for me like that, I feel two selves pulling at me.

The daughter I’ve always been and now the mother she now needs.

Yet somehow… both coexist.

In those tender moments, I’ve started treating her words like little doorways. Invitations to step backward with her into the soft-edged memories that shaped our lives. So I go with her — back to the days when she brushed my hair in the hallway light, or the summers when we drove with the windows down, singing badly to songs we didn’t know all the words to.

Because these memories are not lost.

They just need a hand to hold to find their way back.

Grief and Sweetness Can Live Together

It’s okay to shed tears for what is fading.

So much has been altered, rearranged, softened at the edges.

And yet, there is sweetness too — the kind that asks us to slow down, to lean in, to remember that love isn’t bound by age or clarity or even roles.

Love shifts into the shape that is needed next.

Today, she called me Mom.

And today, I let the word tug me backward and forward all at once —into who she was, into who I’m becoming, and into the quiet, sacred space where those two truths meet. Change is always coming, whether we are ready or not. How we respond and move with it, it what counts.

Choose one simple, ordinary memory from your childhood — something small and soft — and bring it into conversation with your loved one this week. Describe it out loud. Invite them into it. Let it be the doorway back to a time where the world made sense to both of you.

Refection & Action

1. A simple childhood memory I want to share with my loved one:

   (Where were we? What were we doing? What small details do I remember?)

2. When I will share this memory:

   (Date, time of day, and setting that feels calm and unhurried.)

3. How I will start the conversation:

   (Example: “Do you remember when…?” or “I was just thinking about the time we…”)

4. How my loved one responded:

   (Words, expressions, body language, or quiet moments that stood out.)

5. What did I feel when revisiting this memory together?

6. One small thing I want to try next time to keep these connections going:

Next Step: Stay Supported

If you’re longing for more practical tools, gentle accountability, and a community that understands what it means to love someone living with dementia, I’d love to invite you into our membership platform. Inside, we explore simple ways to use memories, stories, pictures, music, and everyday routines to create moments of connection that feel doable in real life — not just on paper.

You don’t have to figure this out alone. Come sit with others who are walking this same path, one small, meaningful moment at a time.

Your partner in care,
Shelley