Learning from my mother-in-law

For a couple of years now, my 87-year-old mother-in-law has been living with Alzheimer’s. Over the past six months, the decline has been steep—steep enough that she’s had to move into assisted living, and soon likely into a facility that offers a higher level of care.

We had her over for brunch yesterday with family—our daughter and her boyfriend, a daughter-in-law visiting from Vancouver with her son, and her other granddaughter who’s studying at McGill. It had been a while since the Vancouver cousins had seen her.

She didn’t know who they were. Her own grandchildren. Of course, they were heartbroken.

The truth is, she doesn’t recognize my children or me either. My daughter, who visits her every week, has to reintroduce herself each time.

There’s something deeply sad about knowing someone your whole life and no longer being known by them.

And yet—this is only part of the story.

My mother-in-law is not unhappy. Each encounter feels, to her, like a first meeting. And she seems to genuinely enjoy it.

My daughter’s boyfriend had never met her before. Sitting beside them on the couch, I watched him engage her with a kind of effortless warmth. He asked questions the way you would when meeting someone new, and she answered as best she could—sometimes in fragments, sometimes drifting, sometimes not making sense at all.

And he just… went with it.

No correction. No discomfort. No need to anchor her to reality.

He met her where she was.

Watching them together, I realized something: this “first meeting” is now the reality for all of us. And somehow, he understood instinctively what the rest of us are still learning—that connection doesn’t depend on shared memory. It depends on presence.

In her own way, my mother-in-law is teaching us something profound: how to accept her on her terms, with patience and love.

To let go of who she was to us, and be fully with who she is now.

At one point, I told her something I’ve always carried with me. When I first joined the family, she said to me: "You’re not my son-in-law—you’re no different from my own children."

That openness—that generosity—defined both her and my father-in-law. It wasn’t something I was used to, having grown up in a more rigid and judgmental household.

My mother-in-law chose to be that way, in part, because she hadn’t been fully accepted by her own in-laws. They treated her differently from their daughter. She made a quiet vow to do better—to treat the spouses of her children as her own.

And she did.

When I told her this, something flickered. Recognition, maybe. Her eyes lit up. She nodded. And she recalled fragments of memory, and pieced together how her in-laws had favoured their daughter.

And it struck me then: Now it’s our turn, to meet her where she is.

To offer her the same open, generous, non-judgmental love she gave so freely to us. It doesn't matter if she she knows who we are. What matters is the moment we are sharing together.