@mike1961, Welcome to Mayo Clinic Connect!
You ask, how do you accept the fact of dementia? It's hard to ever accept the situation, but you do have to deal with it. When it’s your mom it’s 10x more upsetting, I’m sure. My father also had dementia and it was difficult to accept. He was a senior army officer and he slowly became a different person. We learned to deal with the man he was and the man he became.

Has your mom been formally diagnosed with dementia? What have you noticed?