Traveling Through the Fog

The smart strategies families living with Alzheimer’s disease can use to navigate the world.

- Kinsey Gidick

I KNEW SOMETHING was wrong at Christmastime in 2021. My mom turned to my husband of 11 years—an only child whom she’d known for more than a decade—and asked if he had any siblings. Something cracked open, and I finally admitted to myself what I’d been refusing to accept: she had dementia.

I had fears and worries about care plans and logistics—and about her lost memories, of course. But I was also gutted about the loss of our shared connection to travel, a thread that has kept us so tightly bound through the years.

My mom, an outgoing, larger-than-life drama teacher, always had a flair for adventure, and I credit her for my sense of wanderlust. Before I was born she worked as a travel agent, and she planned every trip we took as a family: an