Readers React: In the throes of dementia and even in death, his mother is always the same loving Mom
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To the editor: This Mother’s Day was the first of 67 that passed without my mother, who died from complications of dementia in January.
While I thoroughly enjoyed and identified with the honeyed prose that emanated from Amy Koss’ piece on her experiences with her elderly mother, I view my mom through a different looking glass.
Even in death, my mother will always be as I remember her: self-effacing, showing unconditional acceptance and forgiveness, and having an internal beauty that became more luminescent as her dementia became more pronounced.
Marc Rogers, North Hollywood
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To the editor: I already had a lump in my throat just reading the title of Amy Koss’ op-ed article and her observation, “Just as I will never again see my kids as they once were, I will never again see my mom as she once was.”
She beautifully captured my experience with my mother, except that we can still play a made-up card game so she doesn’t have to hold them and even if at times she thinks I’m cheating her.
I would add that the generational transformation Koss describes includes my increasing awareness that, in my daughter’s eyes, she already is losing sight of how I once appeared to her, and we both know it’s happening.
Jacqueline R. Braitman, Valley Village, Calif.
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