When caring for her mother became too much to manage alone, help came from an unexpected place—a six-year-old boy who simply looked at his mom and said, “I’ve got this.”

The day we moved my mother into my brother’s home, I knew I wasn’t only leaving her behind. I was leaving the everyday life that had helped her remember me—and I knew what dementia might take next.

The neurologist showed me four obvious spots where my mother had experienced strokes. He explained that she had small vessel disease and that it was likely the cause of her cognitive decline.

Moving my mother into her senior apartment was one of the hardest decisions I had ever made. At the same time, it was one of the easiest. Those two things existed together.

In the years my mother lived near us, life found a rhythm.

One day she admitted she had gotten lost driving home from the pet store. A trip that should have taken minutes turned into nearly two hours of driving around a town she had lived in for more than thirty years.

The last thing I wanted was for my mother to see me cry. I usually tried to hide my emotions because when I was upset, she often became upset too.