When I was a kid, my mom worked at a nursing home. I remember one particular incident like it was yesterday–although it was (gasp) about 30 years ago.

My mom, a resident, and I were walking down a hallway. There was an expansive mirror on one side of the hallway. The resident had taken a fall a few days before. The fall had left her with nasty black eye and bruising all over one side of her face.

The resident caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and froze. I thought she was about to make a comment about how awful her face looked, but she didn’t. She didn’t even know it was her face.

“What the hell happened to that old bag?” she exclaimed.

I remember being fascinated with how this person could look in a mirror at herself and think it was someone else. As I sit here thirty years later, I still find this one of the saddest, scariest, and most interesting things about dementia. Seeing a person look in the mirror and not recognize themselves always takes my breath away.

I know a man who accused his wife of cheating because this old guy showed up in their bedroom at night. I recently talked to the daughter of a man who refuses to take showers because he is sick of a creepy dude watching him. A woman at a local nursing home thinks that the woman in the mirror is actually the woman in the next room, and she keeps telling that woman to find a hobby instead of sitting there all day. And I know multiple individuals with dementia who have told family members that people are breaking into their homes. A few have even called the police.

A woman in a support group told me that one day she walked into the bathroom to see her mother washing her face–except it was the face in the mirror. She was getting angry that the woman wouldn’t stay still.

Mirrors are confusing and often agitating for people with dementia. There’s an easy solution, of course. You can take them down. In a family home, curtain rods can be placed over mirrors so that they have adjustable curtains or drapes.

I do know several people with dementia who have made friends with the figure in the mirror. One man chats away to his buddy as he brushes his teeth and bathes. He seems to think it’s someone he served with when he was in the Navy. Another women I know is convinced it is her mother who stares back at her, and she finds this comforting.

The grandmother of one of my friends used her friend in the mirror to reinforce her own opinions. My friend would walk into the nursing home room, and her grandma would say something like “Your shirt is too low cut. You look like a hussy.” Then her grandma would motion to her friend in the mirror and say, “And she agrees with me.”

Fortunately, her family decided to accept the friend in the mirror as part of their grandma’s reality rather than argue with her perception. My friend says she was outvoted on everything–because of that dang lady in the mirror who seemed to agree with grandma on fashion, politics, religion, and TV shows. (The lady in the mirror always wanted to watch Divorce Court, which happened to be grandma’s favorite show as well. What a coincidence.)

The young adult son of a woman with Alzheimer’s told me that he was somewhat prepared for the day that his mother didn’t recognize them. It wasn’t easy, but he saw it coming. He expected there’d be a moment when his mother would look at him blankly and not recall who he was. All the brochures and website had warned him.

He told me was unprepared for the day their mom did not recognize herself. She looked in a mirror and asked about the person looking back at her.

Her son said, “That’s my beautiful mom.”

She responded, “Oh, I don’t know your mom, honey.”

How strange is a disease that it can make you forget yourself?