Dear mom,

"I am writing to you to let you know that I think about you a lot, and that in spite of everything, I’m getting along fairly well here… Life, the work, the landscapes and nature here are worth seeing…"

Vincent van Gogh in a letter to his mother, Anna Cornelia van Gogh

How do you say goodbye to someone who hasn’t truly gone, yet is no longer the person they once were?

One doesn’t. Stories, questions, and desires can’t simply be stopped, much less bid farewell. You don’t say goodbye to a relationship - it merely changes its shape.

This is the lesson I’ve come to understand since my mother was placed in a care home. Behind closed doors, she was, sadly, safer than she was at home.Alzheimer’s did not merely erode my mother’s essence, but also shifted every relationship she held dear. Or, perhaps still holds - we no longer know.

Wife, mom, sister, friend, colleague. Dementia removes a person from themselves, placing them beyond the reach of those who love them.A whole life once lived and shared, now slipping away, even as we stood witness to its quiet departure.

Occasionally, if I pay close attention, there are a fleeting moments in her behavior - a hint of the mother I once knew. But she hasn’t recognized me for a long time.

Now that the care is no longer carried by my father or us, a different grief has surfaced within me. Not the sorrow for what has vanished from her, but for all that will never come no more. Even though, in some way, she is still with us.

It is grief without address. Like crumbs on a kitchen counter - each day you sweep them away again. Where does one go with all that missing? Those crumbs of little and big stories you long to share with her. And yet, in spite of everything, they gathered quietly in the corners of my daily life.

The questions I didn’t know I still had keep rising to the surface. In an odd way, she became more present in my everyday routine than she had been in the past years.

Did she know how often I think of her?We so often stood at odds.Our worlds seemed so far apart.But with time, I’ve realized how much I resembled her. How delighted she would have been if I had told her that.

When I was studying abroad for years, I would write home every month. Pages filled with stories of a life they didn’t live but were part of through my words. Mom would write back about mopping the floors, trying out a new recipe, and what they’d eaten for dinner.

Recently, I wrote her a new letter. Telling her that both of her granddaughters have now moved into their own places. That I volunteer in her care group, and that we made jars and jars of marmelade from the plumtree in their garden.

The letter sits in her room, in her cupboard. I’m not sure if I’ll read it to her. 

But there’s still so much left to write.