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ForumCaregiver Support: Sandwich Generationthe key is still on my counter

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the key is still on my counter

#1 · June 4, 2026, 2:55 pm

Quote from HappierFit Editorial Team on June 4, 2026, 2:55 pm
— Elena Vasquez (sandwich-gen / MSW, contributor)

I wrote a piece a few weeks ago about taking the spare key off my mother's keyring while she was in the bathroom. The key has been in a small ceramic dish on my kitchen counter since the last week of May. I have not given it back. I have not told her I took it.

Last Thursday she went through her keyring. She did this in front of me, at her kitchen table, looking for a different key — a key to a storage unit she rents that I am pretty sure she has not opened in two years. She pulled the keyring out of her purse. She thumbed through every key. She got to the end and she paused.

She did not say the spare house key was missing. She just paused. Then she said "must be in the other purse" and she kept moving.

I watched her. I did not say anything. I have read about this exact moment in the dementia caregiving literature — the cared-for person notices something is off and chooses not to name it because naming it would cost more than not-naming it — and I am ashamed to write that I felt relief when she chose not-naming. Relief is not the right word. It is the word, but it is not the right one to write.

The other thing that happened Thursday — and I am putting this in because I do not want to write a piece that ends on the relief beat — is that she asked me, twenty minutes later, to drive her to a doctor's appointment the following week. She said it was "because parking is bad over there." Parking is not bad over there. I have parked over there hundreds of times. She did not want to drive to that appointment. Asking me to drive her was the closest thing to a driving conversation either of us has had in a year.

I said yes. I did not say "is this a thing you want me to start doing for more appointments." I did not say "we should talk about the keys." I drove her to the appointment Tuesday. We had a regular conversation in the car about my brother's kids. The clock in her car is still twenty-three minutes off. I did not say anything about the clock.

The peer-reviewed part of me wants me to make this into a clean motion. Take the spare key and the parking-is-bad ask, put them together, sit her down with my husband present, have the conversation. The peer-reviewed part of me has been saying this for fourteen months. I keep not doing it.

What I am doing instead is — and I think this is actually a thing I am doing on purpose now, not just by failing to do the other thing — I am letting her hand me the small concessions. The parking ask is a concession. The not-naming the missing key is a concession. The asking-me-to-drive is a concession. She is moving toward the same place I am trying to get her to and she is moving at her speed, with her dignity intact, and I am, finally, letting her.

The driving conversation is still postponed. The key is still on the counter. I am still cataloging.

I am not asking what to do. I am putting it here because the last piece had a lot of "you should just have the conversation" replies in the comments on the article side, and I want to say, calmly, that sometimes the conversation happens sideways over six months, and sometimes the protective motion does not need to escalate into a meeting, and sometimes the daughter and the mother are doing something together that does not have a clean name. We are doing one of those.

— Elena Vasquez (sandwich-gen / MSW, contributor)

I wrote a piece a few weeks ago about taking the spare key off my mother's keyring while she was in the bathroom. The key has been in a small ceramic dish on my kitchen counter since the last week of May. I have not given it back. I have not told her I took it.

Last Thursday she went through her keyring. She did this in front of me, at her kitchen table, looking for a different key — a key to a storage unit she rents that I am pretty sure she has not opened in two years. She pulled the keyring out of her purse. She thumbed through every key. She got to the end and she paused.

She did not say the spare house key was missing. She just paused. Then she said "must be in the other purse" and she kept moving.

I watched her. I did not say anything. I have read about this exact moment in the dementia caregiving literature — the cared-for person notices something is off and chooses not to name it because naming it would cost more than not-naming it — and I am ashamed to write that I felt relief when she chose not-naming. Relief is not the right word. It is the word, but it is not the right one to write.

The other thing that happened Thursday — and I am putting this in because I do not want to write a piece that ends on the relief beat — is that she asked me, twenty minutes later, to drive her to a doctor's appointment the following week. She said it was "because parking is bad over there." Parking is not bad over there. I have parked over there hundreds of times. She did not want to drive to that appointment. Asking me to drive her was the closest thing to a driving conversation either of us has had in a year.

I said yes. I did not say "is this a thing you want me to start doing for more appointments." I did not say "we should talk about the keys." I drove her to the appointment Tuesday. We had a regular conversation in the car about my brother's kids. The clock in her car is still twenty-three minutes off. I did not say anything about the clock.

The peer-reviewed part of me wants me to make this into a clean motion. Take the spare key and the parking-is-bad ask, put them together, sit her down with my husband present, have the conversation. The peer-reviewed part of me has been saying this for fourteen months. I keep not doing it.

What I am doing instead is — and I think this is actually a thing I am doing on purpose now, not just by failing to do the other thing — I am letting her hand me the small concessions. The parking ask is a concession. The not-naming the missing key is a concession. The asking-me-to-drive is a concession. She is moving toward the same place I am trying to get her to and she is moving at her speed, with her dignity intact, and I am, finally, letting her.

The driving conversation is still postponed. The key is still on the counter. I am still cataloging.

I am not asking what to do. I am putting it here because the last piece had a lot of "you should just have the conversation" replies in the comments on the article side, and I want to say, calmly, that sometimes the conversation happens sideways over six months, and sometimes the protective motion does not need to escalate into a meeting, and sometimes the daughter and the mother are doing something together that does not have a clean name. We are doing one of those.