My name is Melissa, and I was a caregiver for my dad through his Alzheimer’s journey. He was a brilliant, quiet man — the CFO of an oil company, a master with numbers, a golfer with three hole-in-ones. Watching his mind slip away while holding his body together was the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever done.
It started during the pandemic, when he was diagnosed in 2021. At first, it was small things — forgotten passwords, paranoia about scam texts, constant visits to Geek Squad. But it escalated quickly. In early-2024, he couldn’t recognize my mom’s name on a bank statement. By mid-2024, he didn’t know who she was at all.
I became his power of attorney, not realizing that every complex decision my dad used to handle — major financial decisions for his business, legal contracts, investments — would now fall to me. I’m a creative, not a finance person, and stepping into his shoes felt impossible.
We tried everything to keep him comfortable. My husband and I each went part-time at work. We took shifts, spent days with him so my mom could get a break. I filled our time with joy where I could — we played putt-putt, hit golf balls, painted, had fancy desserts. I tried to make him feel like himself again, even if just for an afternoon. My mom struggled more — anger, heartbreak, and fear all tangled together. She was watching her husband vanish, and it broke her.
We tried to honor his wishes of staying home even as the disease progressed. We locked the doors to keep him safe, but he still wandered whenever he was left alone, even for a few minutes. He didn’t recognize his own house. One night, he mistook me for a cleaning lady and accused me and my mother of having late-night parties and taking money from his investment accounts.. I would just cry, my mom would scream, and together we began to unravel.
After much hesitation, we placed him in memory care. We fought hard to make it feel like home. From across the country, I designed his room layout on Canva, picked the furniture, added his favorite snacks, brought his dog, hacked an Alexa to be his “friend” so he could call me. Still, he packed his things in an ottoman every night, thinking he was moving out.
One of our last days together, he was waiting for me by the locked door. “We gotta get out of here. The cops are looking for me,” he said. I played along as we drove around town, with him convinced we were on the run. When a police car pulled up behind us in a drive-thru, we both ducked down. “We’re done!” he exclaimed. It was one of the most beautiful, adventurous moments I’d ever had with my reserved, quiet father. The disease was cruel, but it gave us moments together I never would have had otherwise.
We tried to make the best of it. One night, my mom and I took him out for pizza. A waitress, a stranger with tattoos and piercings — someone my dad might’ve judged in the past — treated him like royalty. She made him a special drink, split the pizza her way and his, brought him dessert “on the house.” He asked, “Is it my birthday?” She said, “Sure, why not?” That was the last night we had like that.
Then came the hospitalization. Last October, he collapsed at memory care and was taken to the hospital with COVID. He became delirious and combative. They restrained him—tied to the bed in a way that he couldn’t even scratch his nose. It was distressing to see my gentle father shouting uncharacteristic things, completely out of character. The hospital seemed to treat him only for COVID, not accounting for his Alzheimer’s.
“I found myself Googling everything and just trying to understand. Why is he having this reaction? Honestly, the only place I got solace was the Alzheimer’s Association’s helpline, which I called every night, and Facebook groups specifically focused on Alzheimer’s in moments where I felt alone or didn’t want to bother others with my scary questions.
No doctor visited while I was there. When I finally learned about the hospital ombudsman, they set rules to improve his care, but it was so late in the process. I fought to bring him home with hospice care, setting up my parents’ living room like a hospital room.
He rallied briefly — a warm meal, a shower, time with his dog. Then the agitation returned on day two. We had him taken by ambulance to an inpatient hospice in hopes of getting his meds on track. He was asleep within a few combative hours and never woke up again. For ten days, I sat by his side. One afternoon, I stepped out to look at a cloud shaped like an angel — when I returned, he was gone.
I still don’t know how to make sense of the trauma. But I do know this: caregivers need more support. More than we can even articulate. We need breaks. We need community. We need systems that don’t tie our loved ones to beds and leave us sobbing in fluorescent hallways.
So I started writing, made a caregiver journal, joined support groups, and stayed to help the next person who found themselves where I was: completely unprepared, exhausted, terrified—and doing it anyway.
