Eighteen years ago, Adam Kaye was hosting a family barbecue at his home in Del Mar, Calif., when his mother, Martha Kaye, broke the news. At 71 years old, she realized that she was becoming forgetful. While working in the kitchen, she would ask herself out loud, "What am I doing?" Martha — better known as Marti — started calling everyone "Darling" because names had begun to slip her mind.
Adam had suspected something was wrong. So when Marti told him she had Alzheimer's disease, the diagnosis didn't come as a surprise. "But that didn't mean that it wasn't very difficult to hear," he says. "It was something upsetting for my young daughter, who had never seen her grandma cry at the time."
