'My Mom Will Always Be My Best Friend, But When I Saw Her That Day, I Knew Things Would Never Be Quite The Same.'

I WAS TEACHING LITERATURE AND CREATIVE WRITING WHEN IT STARTED. I had driven home to celebrate my 38th birthday with my mother.

- Deborah Kennedy

When I opened the front door to her house, I found her sitting proudly at the kitchen table, a chocolate cake and two shirt boxes wrapped in curly orange ribbon in front of her. ‘Happy birthday!’ she said, gesturing shyly at the boxes. ‘Open them.’

They contained a rainbow’s worth of sports bras – teal, orange, neon green, neon yellow, pink, purple – and shorts to match. Socks too, and a hat.

‘It all wicks,’ Mom said.

My mom had always been a stellar shopper and, as she knows me better than anyone, she’d got me exactly what I wanted. I’d asked for running clothes, and she’d got me running clothes. I hugged her and thanked her, and proceeded to eat three slices of cake.

‘Too many kilojoules,’ I said, not really caring.

Mom dismissively waved off my put-on guilt. We loved our sugar, always had. Cake, cookies, sweets: our three favourite food groups. ‘You’ll run them off tomorrow,’ Mom said.

Many adult children with a parent suffering from failing memory or dementia will tell you there was one day, one event, one moment that signalled to them that their relationship with their mother or father would be forever changed.

For me that day came two weeks later, when I drove back for another short visit. I came upon exactly the same scene: my mom sitting at the kitchen table; a second untouched chocolate cake resting next to two more white boxes wrapped in curly ribbon. The ribbon was green this time. That was the only difference. ‘Happy birthday!’ my mom said.

I blinked. Was I stuck in the Matrix? Was Neo’s black cat going to make an appearance soon?

‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

Mom smiled. ‘Can’t I celebrate my daughter’s birthday?’