Screen icon Caridad Sanchez has dementia, says daughter Cathy Babao

Caridad Sanchez and her family have been dealing with the veteran actress’s dementia, her daughter revealed last September.

Esteemed grief counselor Cathy Babao spoke up on coping with her mother’s condition on her blog last Sept. 17.

“My mother is fading. Day by day, week by week. It is the most difficult challenge of my adult life, next to losing my son,” wrote Babao, who was a columnist for the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Lifestyle section. She lost her 5-year-old son in 1994 and has been dedicated to helping others deal with loss.

“Anticipatory grief. This is what this is all over again,” she remarked on witnessing her mom with Alzheimer’s disease.

Babao admitted to holding back information about her mother until a friend encouraged her to break the stigma on mental health conditions.

She also reflected on the “long goodbye” she has been traversing, comparing it with the swift one she had to give her father in an Instagram post on Sept. 22.

“Today I was thinking how when my dad suddenly died at age 49 from a heart attack, I didn’t get to have the chance to say goodbye. To say all the things I wanted to tell him, to tell him what a great dad he was, and how grateful I was for everything he had taught me and done for me,” she wrote.

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“Now, perhaps, our Father is giving me this chance at a long goodbye with my mom. To say all the things I need to say, to care for her, and to love her. That thought somehow comforted me. Because throughout this long goodbye, though the time may come when she will no longer remember me, I hope she will continue to feel the care and the love. After all, the heart always knows, and never forgets,” said Babao.

Sanchez, who hails from Cebu, was proudly morena at a time when most of her peers in the industry were mestiza. The actress got her break through the legendary LVN Pictures with the 1958 film “Malvarosa” and has had a decades-long career in movies and television. Nineties kids would know her as Lola in the educational series “Bayani” which ran from 1995 to 2000. JB

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