When the Veil Fell

When the Veil Fell

When my father died, the ground shifted under all our feet. His passing was sudden—one medical procedure, one night’s sleep, and then he simply didn’t wake up the next morning.

Losing a parent that abruptly shakes you in ways you can’t prepare for. But as hard as that was, something else happened at the same time—something I didn’t see coming.

When my father died,
the veil fell.

Only then did we realize how much of my mother’s world he had been holding together.

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The Quiet Covering

My mother had been declining for years—quietly, subtly, almost invisibly. The little signs were there if you looked closely: forgetting why she walked into the kitchen, confusion when the sequence of simple actions became tangled, small lapses that didn’t add up to a crisis on their own.

But my father had been covering for her.

He had become the scaffolding around her daily life, smoothing over the gaps, explaining away the forgotten steps, redirecting her when her mind drifted. And he never complained about it. Never made it a burden.

We didn’t understand the full extent of her impairment until the one person who had been compensating for all of it was suddenly gone.

And the moment we saw her without him, we realized:

She couldn’t live independently anymore.
Not even close.

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Four Brothers, Four Angles, One Mother

Between the four of us, we represented four perspectives:
• Bob in Charleston, South Carolina, living with fragile health after surviving cancer in his twenties.
• Gene in St. Albans, West Virginia — closest to our mother, and closest to the day-to-day reality.
• Bill in the Norfolk area of Virginia.
• And me, living in Richmond.

From a distance, it’s easy to underestimate dementia.
You see a snapshot and think:

“She’s okay today. She had a good moment.”

But dementia is not a moment. It is a trajectory.

Gene saw that daily.
We didn’t.

And so we argued—not out of anger, but out of love.

Some of us thought she just needed meal help.
Some thought she needed part-time care.
Some thought she was still capable of living alone with just a nudge.

But the truth was much darker:

She needed 24-hour care.
My father had been providing it. We just didn’t know.

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Honoring My Father’s Request

Thankfully, my father had left my mother well provided for—around three-quarters of a million dollars in savings and investments. He had asked only one thing of us:

“Let her stay in the house as long as she can.”

It was their money.
Their home.
Their wishes.

And we wanted to honor that.

But honoring a parent’s wish and facing the reality of dementia are two very different things. The disease makes its own decisions.

Eventually, reluctantly, we hired round-the-clock caregivers at $15 an hour—an enormous cost, but the only humane choice left.

And then we found her:
the caregiver who became my mother’s primary companion.
A warm, strong-willed, retired Union Carbide employee—smart, grounded, and patient in ways most of us can only hope to be.

She cared deeply for my mother.
And my mother… at times, cared for her too.

But dementia has a way of turning kindness into threat.

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The Day With the Scissors

As her condition worsened, my mother grew increasingly suspicious, confused, and frightened. She didn’t understand why people were “infiltrating” her house. She couldn’t accept that she needed help.

One day, fueled by fear, she threatened her caregiver with a pair of scissors.

That moment allowed us to get her into the hospital—something we had been struggling to do. Only then did we receive the full diagnosis:

structural dementia, not Alzheimer’s.

Likely multiple mini-strokes over many years.
A slow, silent erosion.

Bob and I visited her there. She was terrified, confused, and furious with us.

“You’re Judas,” she told us.

It wasn’t her voice.
It was the disease speaking through the remnants of her mind.

Still, hearing your mother call you a betrayer is the kind of wound that takes its own time to make sense of.

From that point forward, her decline accelerated.
There was no going back.

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The Last Night

Toward the end, she was placed on comfort care.
No machines.
No interventions.
Just presence, dignity, and the natural arc of her life coming to its close.

Gene and I took twelve-hour shifts so she would not die alone.
I drove back and forth from a downtown Charleston hotel, holding vigil with the mother we had known and the mother we were losing simultaneously.

It was during one of my night shifts—around three or four in the morning—that something happened I will never forget.

My mother had been unresponsive for days.
Eyes closed.
Breathing ragged and shallow.
No words.
No awareness.

Then, suddenly—
she sat straight up in bed.

Her eyes were wide open.

And on her face was the most astonishing expression of awe… wonder… amazement… something beyond description.

She didn’t look at me.
She looked beyond me, through the room, as if she was seeing something that wasn’t there for me to see.

Her hands lifted slightly, palms open—
not reaching, but receiving.

It was not fear.
It was not confusion.
It was recognition.

And then, just as suddenly, she lay back down again.
Her eyes closed.
The moment was over.

Hours later, Gene called me:

“She’s gone.”

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What Came After

In the months after her death, we began the slow work of settling the estate. And during that period—after all of us had already been stretched thin by years of caregiving and the grief of losing both our mother and father—we lost Bob as well.

He had lived with health complications most of his life, ever since the cancer in his twenties. His passing wasn’t unexpected, but it added another layer of sorrow to a family already worn down by loss.

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Looking Back Through the Veil

It took time—years, really—for me to understand what had actually happened in those last seasons of my parents’ lives.

My father had been holding my mother together with his own two hands.
He hid her decline not to deceive us, but to protect her—and, in his own way, to protect us.

And when he died, the veil that had covered her impairment fell all at once.

My mother’s final expression—a flash of wonder in the middle of her fading—remains one of the most mysterious and beautiful things I have ever witnessed.

People think dementia is about forgetting.
But sometimes, at the very end, something forgotten is briefly remembered—something none of us can name.

I carry that moment with me.
Not as a wound.
As a gift.