Joey Daley knew that it was only a matter of time before his mother, Molly Daley, would forget him. Her memory loss was an expected symptom of her dementia. He just never expected it to happen so soon, only two years after her diagnosis.
The day Molly could no longer remember him was captured on video and shared on their YouTube channel.
It started out as an ordinary day. A trip to the mall. A haircut for Molly. A stop by Wendy’s for a Frosty. But by the end, Joey, 45 of Ohio, was sitting in his car in tears.
“Hardest day of my life,” he said near the end of the YouTube video which has gotten about 1.7 million views. “She knows my name but she doesn’t know who I am. I tried so hard to get her to tell me who I was with photos and she just doesn’t know.”
Watch their full video here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt8C-P8Fc4g
Weeks after that was recorded, Joey said the moment felt like death.
“It was like an empty feeling,” Joey told Care.com. “It was almost like a death. You realize that your mother doesn’t know who you are and it’s almost like you don’t exist. That was hard.”
He added that he’s not sure if she has remembered that he is her son since that day several weeks ago but says she sometimes thinks his son is him.
“That actually made me feel a little bit better,” he said. “At least I was still in the family somewhere. If my son was me, that’s better than nothing at all.”
This video is just one of the biweekly installments that give viewers a peek into what it’s truly like to live with dementia. Joey and Molly started to record and post the videos about 40 days ago and since then, millions of people have watched, commented, subscribed and started conversations in a support group on Facebook.
An estimated 47.5 million people worldwide are living with dementia with about 7.7 million new cases reported each year, according to the World Health Organization.
But still, Joey realized how little he knew about the disease until his mother’s diagnosis two and a half years ago.
“You can read about dementia all day long but you’re still not going to understand it until you see it in real life,” Joey said. “That’s why I started the video series, to show what it’s like for the caregivers and people that have dementia and really the suffering they go through.
“There’s nothing pleasant about it. It’s not like you’re just losing your mind a little bit… You literally go crazy in your own head and that’s what my mother is going through.”
Just like in real life, some days are full of laughter and other days end with tears. In the past few weeks, Joey says emails have poured in from people all over the world. Some people are sharing their own experiences while others say the videos have made them more grateful for their health.
For Joey, his goal is to raise more awareness and understanding about dementia. He is willing the share his family’s story as long as it helps.
