Some things cannot be denied. Eventually the variant behaviors of a loved one cry out for help. At last our love for them breaks through denial and the generational barrier protecting us from fear of our own mortality. It happened when my father died.

For a few years we did not speak as a family about mother’s changing emotions and behaviors. We walked around them in our conversation, but intuitively began to protect her in unobtrusive and subtle ways. She feared social occasions; I would make excuses for her absence. She lost weight; I assured that it was due only to aging. I began to notice my father was reading about Alzheimer’s disease, but we never discussed it. And I hold a Master’s Degree in psychotherapy!

During these years, I witnessed the increasing stress my father was experiencing. Mother could manage fewer of the household duties. He compensated. She burned the food; he tried to do the cooking. He was stoic and unrelenting in his effort to “take care of things.” I began to talk with the two of them about getting help with household chores. They stood together against it. But my father could not withstand the impact of the changes in Mother and the burden of his expanded role. His grief and his refusal to receive help killed him.

What happened to Mother after his death was our most resounding cry for help yet. Dad lingered through the night after a massive heart attack. Mother sat by his bedside until after 2:00 a.m. Then we bedded her down in the hospital waiting room. When I went to the room to awaken her, I got my own “wake up call.” She did not remember our father was ill, much less dying. Not to remember that your beloved is dying is not a lapse or a mild failure in short-term memory. It is an unmistakable symptom of severe dementia, probably of the Alzheimer’s type. In the weeks and months following she could not remember he had died.

Sometimes during the memorial events for my father, I sensed grief in my siblings and myself that spilled over, beyond his death. This grief was intermingled with the specter of disbelief – different from denial. Our mother’s behavior could not be denied, but for some of us it could not be accepted. It was disbelieved. We would hold out – at least another week when we all had to return to our work places and homes.

The time had come to seek thorough and serious medical diagnosis and in-home assistance.