When my father’s dementia began putting his life in danger, I stopped sleeping peacefully. At first, it was little things. He would forget where he had placed his glasses or repeat the same question several times within an hour. Sometimes he couldn’t remember what day it was.

One night, I woke up at three in the morning to discover that he had left the stove burning. Another time, I found the front door wide open in the middle of winter. The most frightening incident happened when I discovered him halfway down the street, wearing nothing but his slippers and a thin sweater.

He was trembling and confused.

“Where is my house?” he asked when I approached him.

My heart broke.

This was the man who had raised me, worked exhausting double shifts to provide for our family, and carried me on his shoulders when I was little. Now, he couldn’t even recognize the neighborhood where he had lived for more than thirty years.
I was the one who stayed, the one who noticed when things became dangerous, and the one who made the difficult choice when everyone else turned away.

And every time Dad looks up, smiles, and says, “There’s my girl,” I know I made the right decision.