A Dementia Diagnosis Rewrote My Mother's Past—and My Own
Should a medical diagnosis reshape the past? (2025)
When her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's at fifty, the author's father offered a comforting story: the coldness and rage she'd grown up with were symptoms, not choices. But the science of when personality changes begin is unsettled, and each memory can be read two ways. Through a game she calls "disease or disposition?" she asks how much biology should be allowed to rewrite the past—and whether forgiving her mother means condemning herself.
The boat presents a false binary, a false precision, yet it feels necessary because I do not fully believe my dad's story that it was the disease that made Mom a woman who said she would stop loving me if I "did something bad." Surely, it can't have been the wind the entire time.