Inside the Dementia Epidemic: A Daughter's Memoir by Martha Stettinius

not to think about how soon I’ll have to dip into her IRA and mutual funds, or how many years her savings will last. Deep in my heart, I feel an acceleration—the meter is running.
    I visit Mom about once a week; if I wait longer than that she chides me in a gentle tone: “I thought you’d given up on me.”
    “No, of course not,” I say.
    I don’t hear in her words that she might feel lonely or even rejected. I just hear confusion. I remind her that I’m close by and will visit her often.
    I drive her to all of her doctor’s appointments, and her favorite thing to do afterwards is to go out for an early dinner or ice cream. Meals at Greenway disappoint her. Unlike the residents in the independent section of Greenway, as an assisted-living resident, Mom is not allowed to stand in line for the fresh vegetables and fruit in the salad bar; she must wait at her table for the same poor iceberg lettuce with tomato and cucumber or macaroni salad. I imagine this rule about the salad bar materialized because many assisted-living residents become confused and might take too long choosing which items they want, perhaps growing agitated, while the independent residents wait in line behind them. Nevertheless this rule is one of many small indignities. Another indignity is that staff members may open her door without knocking to tell her it’s time to eat. When I notice a wooden chair in the middle of her room Mom tells me a staff member came into her room at six o’clock one morning while she was sleeping to change a light bulb in the dome in the ceiling, bringing the chair with her to stand on; not only did the staff person not ask permission to enter the room,she never finished the job and left the chair where my mother could bump into it.
    At first, the staff assigns Mom to sit at a table in the large, main dining room with two other women and a man from assisted living. When I join Mom for a few meals, her tablemates pick at their plates with grave expressions in complete silence. Mom’s social; she likes to ask people questions and to laugh. I can’t bear seeing my mother trapped with such depressing company three times a day every day.
    I ask Daphne, the case manager, if Mom can be moved to a different table. Advocating for my mother, even in this small way, feels risky to me. I don’t want to develop a reputation right away as a bothersome family member. I fear the staff will resent my nitpicking and treat my mother less kindly, but soon I’m glad I spoke up. Within a week, Mom finds herself in a smaller wing of the dining room in the happy company of three talkative women from her assisted-living floor.
    M y mother seems to have forgotten that she ever smoked. Upon moving in she had to quit smoking cold turkey; their fire regulations require that residents walk twenty feet outside to smoke, and the staff does not have time to accompany the residents outside. This seems miraculous; she never seems to crave a cigarette, never even mentions her habit of fifty years.
    F or these first few months Mom has continued to take her medication alone in her room, one of only two residents in the assisted-living section to do so, Daphne tells me. Now, though, Daphne gently suggests, first to my mother and then to me, that it might be a better idea if Greenway kept track of her medication. Daphne and I agree that really we have no way of knowing for sure whether my mother remembers to take her medicine on schedule.Apparently Daphne’s patient manner convinces Mom to cooperate, and Mom relinquishes control of this with the same grace she did her driving, bill paying, and cigarettes. Twice a day, she will wait in line outside the medication room for her pills to be handed to her in a paper cup with another small cup of water to swallow. I feel sad picturing my proud mother waiting in line like a schoolgirl, but I’m grateful that Greenway can monitor her medication more closely than I have.
    B efore she moved in, the maintenance