Ma was a reservoir of memories, now muddled by Alzheimer's disease

“Dementia is a cruel mistress, taking the one you love and leaving behind just a trace, enough for you to know what you’ve lost”

As the sun dipped, it cast a warm glow over the room adorned with familiar textiles. I sat facing my mother, who gazed out at the park near her home. Ma, a reservoir of memories that are now muddled by Alzheimer’s disease, sat in her favourite chair. The threads of our shared complicated history hung heavy in the air. If someone had asked me about my mother five years ago, I would have had a laundry list of complaints: narcissistic tendencies, a disregard for boundaries, sexism, stubbornness and a flair for the dramatic. But when you have a parent with Alzheimer’s disease, everything you previously knew about them gets wiped clean.

After the doctors finished their tests and gave us the final diagnosis of dementia, I was shocked, but there was also an undercurrent of anger. I knew what kind of person my mother was; this would be her excuse to deny, dismiss or ‘forget’ any of her wrongdoings in our complicated relationship.

What a terrible reaction to such grave medical news about your parent. But I couldn’t help my mind replaying every argument we had. Every time she favoured my brother, ‘the son of the family’, over me, despite him being the youngest of three siblings. Nothing I did was good enough for her—my grades, the colour of my skin, my personality, my choice of working with kids (my second choice, she felt that as a woman I shouldn’t go to law school), my husband from another community, and the home we created together.

People often dismissed her bad behaviour with humour. ‘She’s a Leo, after all’. ‘She’s gregarious, needs to be the centre of attention.’ Snide comments and taanas were her speciality, along with denial and gaslighting when confronted or disagreed with.

It was clear to me from an early age that my mother didn’t want me. Or, at the very least, she didn’t want me to come first. She wanted a son and tried again until she had one with her third pregnancy. A long list of her sacrifices as a mother was often held over my head, usually to guilt me into doing something or getting her way.

We have a fraught relationship, to say the least, but when your parent, your guardian and first role model, meets with such a diagnosis and an ‘end-of-life plan’, things change.

My mother has always been her authentic self, warts and all, with the expectation of complete acceptance. Over time, my father started to pick up on her growing forgetfulness. An anomaly for his wife who remembered details, like the unfortunate white shirt that he wore while visiting her family as a prospective groom. It was soon covered in muddy paw prints as the huge family Doberman pounced on him. She often narrated the story at parties. “Everyone knows how friendly the dog is, but I remember how terrified Ajit* was when he climbed on top of him. He’s so scared of dogs, I swear I saw his face turn white!”

Things started to slip her mind. First, it was small things. Then, one day, she asked why my kids took so long to get home from school. My adult children, now living abroad, had completed their schooling 20 years ago. My father didn’t tell me all of these things at first. I live in another city and only realised this after a routine health check kickstarted a series of tests for my mother.

Today, her gaze meets mine with a mix of confusion and recognition. When you have a parent with Alzheimer’s disease, you can’t be sure of how a day is going to go. Will she know I’m her daughter today? Will she want to talk about her father again or try some Sudoku?

Even after the diagnosis, my mother seemed alright. “My memory is as strong as my kadak chai,” she claimed. She is what you would call a ‘proper lady’, who finds emotional reactions to things beyond our control wasteful.

I started therapy a few years ago after the devastating loss of a childhood friend. Eventually, I opened up to my therapist about my strained relationship with my mother. Since then, I’ve tried to talk to Ma to share the impact her actions had on me, but she was never open to listening.

“You are never happy with anything. I am always at fault.” Our conversations always ended this way. But I held onto the hope that one day we would reconcile. Call me a dreamer, but I imagined that she would recognise and acknowledge the negative impact of her actions.

My therapist made me confront reality. “Having a parent with Alzheimer’s disease changes things,” she explained. “You will have to accept that you might never get the closure that you want and need.”

Sitting on the terrace of my parents’ home, I see the shell of my mother, but also what’s missing. Dementia is a cruel mistress, taking the one you love and leaving behind just a trace, enough for you to know what you’ve lost. She’s so close, yet so far. How do you mourn someone who is physically still here?

I mourn the relationship I wanted to rebuild with her. Perhaps I took too long to work on myself before I could finally muster the courage to speak up to my mother. She always said I had a way with words, maybe that is why hers have stuck around in my head.

Sitting across from my mom, the room holds the weight of our memories and unresolved conflicts. A tempest still rages within me. Wanting to untangle the knots of our past is like chasing shadows—a pursuit fraught with futility. How do I make peace with the fact that the answers I crave might remain elusive?

I’ve realised that accountability and closure are unattainable. It’s like trying to solve a puzzle with missing pieces—a frustrating exercise I have to abandon.

I don’t know if I can forgive my mother, but acceptance is the only way forward. Maybe closure isn’t about getting all the answers. It’s about finding peace in ambiguity. Like deciphering an abstract painting, subjective, open to diverse interpretations.

As I grapple with this bittersweet reality, I mourn the living. The person you love, who is becoming a stranger, a guest in their own home. Some part of me will carry this weight forever. For now, I will sip on chai, and enjoy the few glimpses of my mother I can still witness.

*Name changed upon contributor’s request.

This is an anonymous account, as told to Sara Hussain.

If you or someone you know is struggling, the Alzheimer’s and Related Disorders Society of India has chapters in various cities, and resources that can help.