Cashmere Candy Drops

The title Cashmere Candy Drops comes from a conversation Mom and I shared around Christmas of 2025. Struggling to explain a thought, she blurted out, "Cashmere candy drops... I don't know if any of that makes sense to you." In those words, I recognized everything she has always been: soft, warm, creative, sweet, and deeply herself. The phrase became a symbol of the strange, tender moments that now define our relationship-moments filled with imagined worlds that intertwine with the life she once knew.
Dementia is one of the cruelest diseases I can imagine. I know this because I have watched it unfold across two generations of my family, first my grandmother, over fifteen years, and now my mother, my best friend. I watched my mom care for her own mother through a long, painful decline. Now, I find myself standing in her place.
As a caregiver, I've learned that survival requires more than endurance. It requires laughter-often uncomfortable, sometimes inappropriate, but always necessary. I have learned to meet my mom where she is at, even when that no longer aligns with reality.
Cashmere Candy Drops is a memoir offering an honest portrait of caregiving, as it unfolds in real time. Through love, grief, exhaustion, humor, and the slow heartbreak of a long goodbye, writing and laughter have become my only tools for navigating years of impossible decisions and daily losses.
It is written for anyone who has loved someone through cognitive decline and wondered how to survive without losing themselves in the process. In the slow emptying of what once defined me, I discovered that I was not being diminished - I was being made significant in ways I never planned.