December 12, 2023, 81 years old Count Moberg left his River East home and never returned.
A year later, her daughter Britt Moberg is still searching for answers while dealing with this “devastating” loss.
“For the family to lose my father, and in this way, and not find him,” she said. “It’s just hard to accept this as a reality.”
Earl Moberg lived with dementia. He lived at home in Winnipeg with his wife. He was known to wander, as about 60 per cent of people with dementia do at some point, according to the Alzheimer Society of Manitoba.
His wife Brenda was his primary caregiver, and although he had been recommended 24-hour monitoring more than a year earlier, he only received one day of in-home care – the day he went missing.
Ground searches by the Bear Clan Patrol and community volunteers in the days that followed yielded no leads. Earl Moberg is now presumed deceased.
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“It seemed unreal,” Britt recalls. “Like, is this actually happening?” Am I really on the ground looking for my father’s remains?
Over the past year, Britt has made several trips to Winnipeg from her home in Victoria and has spent countless hours working to ensure no other family experiences what hers did. Earl’s disappearance was considered a critical incident in June after Britt sent a detailed account of the circumstances that led to her father’s disappearance to the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority’s critical incident review committee and Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara.
The committee consulted with Britt and Brenda on their preliminary recommendations, and Britt said the WRHA will provide the final recommendations next week.
She also advocated for a Silver Alert program that would notify people of missing seniors via their cell phones, much like the Amber Alert system. A petition to the Government of Canada, which is collecting signatures until January 20, 2025, had more than 2,300 signatures at the time of publication.
Britt says a recent case where a Saanich, British Columbia, man with dementia who died after escaping from his nursing home, reaffirmed the need for a Silver Alert system.
“It’s really painful. I think about this person and their family and what their family is going through,” she said.
She adds that the support of her father’s MLA and MLA, Drag the Red, Bear Clan Patrol, and community members has kept her going over the past year.
“It’s really touching to see how many people care for it and how many people are affected by dementia,” she said.
Britt hopes the Critical Incident Review Committee’s recommendations will help improve the lives of people with dementia.
“I think people grieve in different ways,” she said. “For me, looking at my father’s situation and seeing how I think this could have been avoided…I think it means just trying to advocate for changes that could prevent this.
“I just want to feel like I did everything I could.”
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