She doesn’t remember the last time we were together and swears she hasn’t seen me in years. We had lunch last Sunday. This is the month she gave birth to me, but she won’t remember that either.

Mom is frail and vulnerable now. Her mind is being confiscated by calcium deposits, says the doctor; Alzheimer’s, he says. We walk down the hall from her room to the dining room holding hands and chat about the same things we chatted about the last time.

At first, I mistook her condition for belligerence; frequently hurt by random pot shots that spilled from her lips, seemingly aimed at me. What a shock it was the day I realized that at any time during our conversation she may simply forget I’m her daughter. That was a different pain altogether, but learning more about her condition has helped me not to take those angry words personally.

That didn’t happen overnight. It’s taken almost two years for me to separate my Mother’s words from my Mother’s heart. I know she doesn’t mean to hurt me, I know her mind is not the same as it was when she first held me in her arms so many March’s ago in a hospital on the coast of Maine. She was thrilled she had a girl, now she’s not sure I’m that girl.

An old photo of her in her Air Force uniform sits in an old frame on a shelf in her room. She remembers those days. She recalls meeting my Daddy at the Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi. She tells me stories about her service to our country at a base up in her native New Hampshire, joyfully reminiscing in great detail all the wonders of that favorite time in her life.

With a glance around the room, she is back to today, wondering where she is, how long she has to be there and why she can’t just live in her own home, unsure of where that is or if it still exists. Yes, March is the month Mom brought me into this world just over five decades ago, but honestly it feels strange now that her behavior and demeanor grows more childlike every day – almost as if we’ve changed places.

The most startling sign of my Mother’s regressive condition was when we were at Walmart to shop for Christmas gifts for her grandkids and great-grandkids. It was a struggle from the door as she was struck with sensory overload and I knew that to get her beyond the first aisle in a holiday power-shopping crowd would take strength I didn’t have. By the time we reached a bin full of lap throws that I wanted to look through, it seemed Mom was finally in a shopping mode. She back-tracked a few aisles and I felt a brief moment of hope that she was going to find a gift for someone on our list. When she reappeared, she was clutching a box of 64 Crayola Crayons.

I met her with a big smile and praised her for her choice of gifts, when her face turned into a hurt, defensive child. With a quiver in her voice, she said, “Oh, these are for me.”

I don’t know what my face looked like to her when I processed her statement, but it must have been like a disapproving parent because she quickly added, “But, we can give it to him, if you want.” Of course I didn’t care if she kept the crayons – that was her call, not mine. Still, that moment gave me a peek into the horrible disease that is robbing me of my Mommy and it is not how I imagined she would be when I entered my 50s.

Sometimes I wonder what is harder, suddenly losing my Daddy or watching my Mom slowly lose her memory, her vocabulary and whatever else Alzheimer’s will claim before we say goodbye.

March is melancholy for me this year, and as life ebbs and flows through pain and joy, I’m holding my memories closer than ever.