The author and her sister, Jess, grew up facing severe apathy, harsh criticism, and emotional detachment from their mother. After the mother was diagnosed with dementia past moderate degeneration in her early fifties, their father urged the daughters to view her past actions as biological pathology. In her advanced state of illness, the mother now spends hours caring for three dolls while ignoring her actual children. This heartbreaking progression leaves the family questioning whether biological explanations should demand forgiveness and fundamentally rewrite their painful memories.
Key points
Alzheimer's symptoms and personality shifts can begin manifesting up to two decades prior…: Alzheimer's symptoms and personality shifts can begin manifesting up to two decades prior to an official diagnosis.
Families often struggle to decide whether past mistreatment should be excused as an under…: Families often struggle to decide whether past mistreatment should be excused as an underlying medical pathology.
Late-stage neurological diagnoses challenge individuals to reconcile painful childhood me…: Late-stage neurological diagnoses challenge individuals to reconcile painful childhood memories with biological explanations.
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This essay was published in the Kenyon Review in 2025. I’m sharing it here because I’m tired of emailing people the PDF, plus the re-publishing restriction period lifted. Though it came out fairly recently, it was written a long time ago1; only with great self-control did I ban myself from rewriting completely while formatting in the CMS.
It’s fundamentally a personal story about a relative, but it also circles questions I’ve been asking for a decade now: How much should a medical diagnosis reshape the past? How much does biology require reconciliation?
For hours, my mother talks to the dolls. She’s lined the three of them up on the couch in the living room, the way a child might before lecturing inanimate guests about proper behavior at the afternoon’s make-believe tea party. Each time I walk by on my way to grab a glass of water from the kitchen or do laundry in the garage, I can hear her babbling.
Lindsay was mine: round hazel eyes and coarse brown hair, the only one lucky enough to be named. Nameless Doll…
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