At 54 and a late father, I’m in the position to see my 2 and 6 year olds develope and my 79 year old mother just recently crest the hill.

The comparison is interesting to me. Babies’ little world expands as their nervous system matures to make it possible. At first their world is in their own skin, then sensory, then eyesight expands focus, etc. They gain confidence and competence as they mature.

My mother is in very good shape and health, more energy than me, but a failed cataract surgery has left her with somewhat poor eyesight (she can still read, but does so in sunlight). I’ve noticed she has slipped some. Until this last year she never misplaced things or showed any clumsiness. But what would one expect?

But she has lost some of her self-confidence in everyday things. Like driving unfamiliar routes, or anything to do with visual recognition. And I’m guessing that her world will continue to shrink a little in the coming years.

My point in this comparison – I think the opposite happens at each end of life, and physiology plays a role. As peripheral vision and hearing fade, the world literally shrinks for our elders. And it’s probably true to some degree for all of the senses. I’m sure a good attitude towards life, a feeling of being needed and loved, of engagement with the world, are very important in keeping a brain that probably processes less stimuli than in younger people operating sharply.

But your Mom suffered a brain injury and as a result her mind has been subtly altered. Perhaps that role and persona she had with you was partially lost or damaged and so she can no longer respond to those old cues and memories that used to feed the bond between you.

But in your brain that reservoir of memories and responses still feeds you dailly and it hurts to get no feedback from her.

It is a strange thing to lose the role of child to one’s parent and instead become the parent to the child.

I had to nurse my Mom through terminal cancer and when she died I was terribly grief stricken. It was the loss of my Mother, the mother inside me, that I missed so much. It was the realization of being on my own, without a Mother to watch out for me and nurture me, that was the hardest adjustment.

When my Dad slipped into dementia, it was not so hard for me. I had already moved away from being the Child and had no adjustments to make when I became my Dad’s caregiver.
No, a slight correction, there was some adjustments, I did feel it was unfair that I had to care for my Dad, because he had not been the best Dad in the world but my husband made me see that that was not important. The important thing was was doing the right thing because he needed me.