Kit Chan Opens Up About Supporting Her Mother Through Dementia

It’s never easy having to care for a loved one with dementia, and Kit Chan knows this firsthand. In a heartfelt conversation with actress Rui En, shared on the latter’s Instagram page, the 53-year-old singer reflected on caring for her mother, who passed away in May this year after an eight-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease. She spoke candidly about the challenges she faced and how to approach someone’s mental health with sensitivity when they’re living in an altered reality.

“At one point, I understood how lonely it must be for my mum,” she shared. “We are in this world (referring to reality), but after a while, she has her own world. It’s difficult if you keep telling her it’s not true; she feels very lonely and trapped.”

Drawing from her background in drama — and her own love for dreaming — Kit found a way to step into her mother’s world instead. “I would ask her to tell me about it, and then I would just pretend that I’m in her world. For example, she said that there’s a person who’s always harassing her. At the beginning, we kept saying it’s not true, and she got really angry.”

“So I said, ‘What an annoying person,’ and we would talk about how to deal with this person. And then I realised that it was better, and I tried to teach that to my father and my sisters. And soon, we kind of got the hang of it.”

And while her mum also spoke of vivid experiences from her “other world”, there were also moments of awareness.

“At times, she’s actually aware that that’s not true. For example, she told me that at night, she’s in this other world, where there’s a lot of fighting with swords, and everyone’s attacking her, and she has to fight to survive,” she recalled. “I would tell her, ‘I’m so sorry, Mum, that I cannot go in there to help you fight those people. But you must remember that when you wake up in the morning, you will come back here, and you won’t die in that world.’ And she said, ‘Yah, I know.’”

She realised that what her mother needed was trust. “At the beginning, she showed signs of anger, or would throw things. After we got that sorted out and there was that trust, it totally went away. She became the sweetest person.”

As Rui En observed, “Because she no longer had to explain that that was her world.”

In a retrospective Instagram post in June this year, a month after her mother’s passing, Kit also shared how she continues to honour her mum’s spirit.

“I say I cry every day, but I also laugh every day. I think this is a good answer, and a good way to live. It would be how my mum would want me to live, just like she did. Always looking for that bright spot, catching the sparkle in the dull and mundane, and always choosing joy over sorrow.”