Thursday, September 10, 2020 – early afternoon

The twice-a-week visits with Mom are going well. We meet at about 11 a.m. on Mondays and Thursdays and visit for 30 minutes. We are both enjoying them.

Although it took a long time, I finally got around to sorting through boxes and envelopes of old photos. I went through them three times before I was able to reduce them to a chosen group with which to make a photo album of Mom’s life. The album is large, so when I took it to share with Mom, I gave her individual pages so that she could more easily view the photos.

Overall, she was very curious about the photos and did not recognize most of the people in the photos. There was one photo she saw and she immediately said, “That’s my brother.”

I did not include photos of her first husband, Walter, who was my biological father. I’ll put those in the album I make for my life. That said, at one point I mentioned Walter’s name and Mom quickly said, “I don’t think I was ever married to Walter.” All I said was, “Oh…okay,” and I let it go. When she saw a photo of her and my stepfather, Victor, she said, “I don’t think I ever married Victor.” I just showed her the next photo of their wedding day. She looked a bit perplexed, but she did think the dress was “very pretty.”

Here are some of the album photos my 94-year-old mother with dementia has seen recently…for the very first time, according to her.

Mom as a toddler:

Mom, left, and her older sister, Martha:

Love poem I think Victor typed for Mom:

Photo of Mom on her honeymoon: