Perhaps the greatest adjustment is accepting that we may have to express our love differently.
When we were children, love often meant being held, protected, fed and guided. As adults, it may mean providing financial assistance, arranging medical care, ensuring a safe living environment and making time for conversations that require patience.
When dementia enters the relationship, love may become quieter still.
It may be the decision to sit through an afternoon without expecting conversation. It may be playing a song your mother once loved, even if she cannot explain why it comforts her. It may be accompanying your father on a short walk, allowing him to move at his own pace.
It may be answering the same question again without reminding him that he has already asked it.
These gestures may never restore the memories you wish he could recover. They may not bring back the conversations you miss or the relationship as you once knew it.
But they can make the present more peaceful.
And perhaps that is one of the hardest truths about loving someone through dementia: we must sometimes stop measuring our efforts by what we can recover and begin to recognise what we can still give.
We can offer safety.
We can offer companionship.
We can preserve dignity.
We can remind our parents, through our actions, that they are not alone.
The past may become less accessible to them, but we can continue to honour the life they lived and the place they hold in ours.
The child who once depended on a parent's strength may discover that adulthood is not only about becoming independent. It is also about learning how to stand beside someone whose strength is fading, without allowing their vulnerability to diminish their dignity.
And when the day comes that our parent looks at us again and asks, “Who is this person?”, we may feel the familiar ache.
We may wish for one more moment of recognition, one more smile of understanding, one more sign that the years we shared have not disappeared completely.
But we can take their hand and remain beside them.
Not because we expect them to remember everything.
Because we remember.
And because the love that began with them has become part of who we are.