Having recently returned home after decades living abroad, Chantal persuades her seventy-nine-year-old mother to also return home to Ottawa from California. Chantal anticipates worrying less now that they’re living nearby. Instead, she witnesses increasingly troubling “senior moments” that lead to a devastating diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia (FTD).
As her mother’s world grows smaller and more confusing, Chantal steps into the unfamiliar role of primary caregiver and discovers a new kind of relationship along the way. She makes a simple vow: to make her mother smile every time she sees her. Some days she fails. But in choosing to meet her mother exactly where she is—through each stage of loss and decline—she finds moments of joy woven through the heartbreak.
It Is What It Is tells the story of what endures when dementia takes almost everything. With unflinching honesty, Chantal reveals how the progressive disease transforms her mother, yet somehow never touches her gentle, grateful essence. This is a memoir about adapting to an impossible situation, about finding connection across the growing divide of dementia, and about the unexpected truth that caring for an aging parent can be as rewarding as it is devastating.
