My father always called after his yearly PSA test with the same joyful words: “I’m cancer free!” But this time, the call never came. Looking back, I can see the small signs that something in our lives had already begun to change.

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.

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.