So this is not uninteresting:

[ShazzieB]

21. Same with my husband's stepmother.

The first sign of her encroaching dementia was asking the same questions and telling the same stories over and over again. We were too naive to realize what was going on at first (and my fil was pretty much in denial for a long time), but as things progressed, I could look back and see that behavior for what it was in hindsight.

I regret being so oblivious at the time, but it was my husband's and my first experience with someone in that state, and we were just clueless. In those early stages, her personality hadn't changed noticeably, and we just thought she was extremely, annoyingly absent-minded. Eventually, the signs became much more obvious, and looking back I feel like we maybe should have caught on much faster than we did, but it's amazing what you can miss when you don't know what to look for.