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When My Mother Began to Forget
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Sep 30 2026
Pages: 36
Weight: 0.12
Height: 0.07 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
Before her memory began to slip, Nkem Adaeze could talk a market trader down to half price and still leave them smiling. She remembered everyone's birthday without a calendar. And every Tuesday, without fail, she made egusi soup.
Then one Tuesday, the soup burned.
When My Mother Began to Forget is a short, tender novel about the months between the day a burned pot of soup became impossible to explain away and the diagnosis that gave the forgetting a name. Told by Nkem's daughter, it follows one Nigerian family as they:
- learn to grieve a mother who is still alive
- argue over an unproven treatment that offered a flicker of hope
- settle into the slow, unglamorous work of loving someone whose mind is leaving before her body does
Woven through the story is an honest, carefully researched look at what science actually knows, and does not yet know, about dementia, memory, and early research into treatments both promising and unproven. A practical Toolkit for Families at the back of the book gives you checklists you can use right away, from preparing for a doctor's visit to walking through a home safety check.
Read it with tissues nearby. It is for anyone caring for a parent who is changing, anyone who has ever made a joke to avoid saying the true thing, and anyone who wants to be better prepared for the same season with someone they love.
A short read of about 35 pages. This is a work of fiction and is not medical advice.
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