My mother’s memory didn’t disappear in a single dramatic moment that could be clearly marked in time. It slipped away gradually, almost politely, as if it were trying not to alarm anyone. At first, it was little things that were easy to excuse. She misplaced her purse and laughed about it. She forgot lunch dates she had insisted on planning. She repeated the same childhood story twice in one afternoon and smiled when I gently reminded her she had already told me. We brushed it off as normal aging, the kind everyone warns you about but secretly believes won’t happen to their own family so soon. I told myself she was just tired, just distracted, just overwhelmed. I wanted so badly to believe that nothing serious was happening. Then one morning, as I stood in her kitchen making coffee the way I had done a hundred times before, she looked at me with genuine warmth and asked, “Do you live nearby?” There was no confusion in her tone, no embarrassment—just curiosity, as if I were a kind stranger. In that moment, something inside me broke quietly. I realized that the woman who had raised me, who had memorized my school schedule, my favorite foods, and every fear I ever confessed to her, was slowly losing the map of her own life.