When the police found her, my mother was playing Schubert

The German-based pianist Elisaveta Blumina writes movingly about living with her mother’s dementia.

My mother, Mara Mednik, was born in Leningrad just before World War II . A child prodigy, with perfect pitch and an enormous will to be on stage one day. At the age of two she tried to accompany her violinist uncle on the piano while standing. At the age of five she sat as a soloist in the large hall of the Philharmonic and played Chopin…

After moving to Hamburg, she immediately found a job at the university …. An enormous number of today’s world-famous soloists passed through her hands: she cooked for them, practiced with them in their apartment, accompanied them on their trips to competitions and supported them wherever she could. There is hardly a large orchestra today where her protégés are not seated. Then Corona came. And the dementia…

Read on here.