• Books and reading

    Practical advice: ‘Before Dementia’ by Dr Kate Gregorevic

    Dementia hit the headlines this week, having achieved the dubious honour of becoming the biggest cause of death in Australia, surpassing heart disease. This guide to what we can do to prevent, prepare, cope and understand the illness is very timely.

    Dr Kate Gregorevic is a geriatrician who works at a Melbourne hospital, and the book is peppered with real life anecdotes from her research and practice.

    Twenty questions frame the book’s structure and content, including:

    What is dementia and are you at risk?
    What are the symptoms?
    What causes Alzheimer’s?
    What is life like for a person living with dementia?
    Do people with dementia have the capacity to make decisions?
    Can improving diet help to avoid dementia?
    How do we live well with dementia?

    Most people have been touched by dementia in some way: we have a loved one who lives with the disease, or we know a workmate, neighbour or friend who has been diagnosed, or who cares for someone who has been. So, these very practical questions and the wealth of information included are welcome and useful guides to the illness and what we can expect as it progresses.

    There were sections that resonated strongly with me after watching my mother’s decline with the condition. For example, the insidious way it often begins, creeping up slowly at first, often confused with ‘normal’ age-related memory loss:

    The onset of dementia is so insidious that it often takes something really obvious, an example of memory loss that is so stark, so unforgiving, that it is impossible to look away. This is often when the reframing begins, when all the little things that were so small in themselves start to coalesce.

    Before Dementia pp23-24

    Other points that especially resonated with me because of my own experience included the nature and role of delirium, the phenomena known as ‘sundowning’, the creation of false memories, and the sometimes-catastrophic effect of hospital admissions,

    There is a fair bit of technical information in the chapters to do with the causes and types of dementia. I admit I glazed over a little here. However, I appreciated the author’s desire to translate the latest thinking and discoveries in what is still a contested field, into language that can be read by a non-medical person.

    Ethical challenges are presented openly, and it is up to each reader to decide where they stand on issues such as the capacity of a person with dementia to make decisions about their future care and living arrangements, consent for sexual activity, the right to autonomy and independence. A point that strikes me as a tricky but interesting one, is what Dr Kate terms the ‘dignity of risk’:

    Living well with dementia means accepting the dignity of risk. Many people with dementia will be able to live independent lives, but they may not be perfectly safe.

    Before Dementia p295

    I appreciated the plea made in this book for adequate funding for aged care services, for recognition of the disadvantages faced in all areas of life by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia, and for the value of putting into place as many protective measures as possible as early as possible: improved diet, regular exercise, giving up smoking and excessive alcohol consumption, social and cognitive activity.

    If I were a patient or a family member, and lucky enough to be a patient of Dr Kate, I am sure that I would value her humanist and person-centred approach to living well with dementia.

    While I’m certain that most of us would much prefer NOT to have to think about this disease, and just hope that we or our loved ones won’t ever have to deal with it, I can highly recommend this book. It tackles a difficult subject in a helpful, practical way that removes the ‘overwhelm’ and allows the reader to learn from the experts.

    Before Dementia is published by HarperCollins in February 2023.
    My thanks to the publisher for a review copy.

  • Books and reading,  Children's & Young Adult Books

    Gentle introduction to dementia for kids: ‘Dancing with Memories’ by Sally Yule & Cheryl Orsini

    If you’ve followed by blog for a bit you’d be familiar with the series of posts I wrote called Travels with my Mother, all about my journey with my Mum’s dementia. Mum passed away last year but the memories of her experiences, and the family’s with her, are still quite fresh. So I was keen to read Dancing with Memories, a unique picture book by Australian dementia care worker Sally Yule and illustrator Cheryl Orsini.

    I love the idea of introducing this often misunderstood condition to kids, in an age-appropriate and gentle way. I also applaud the themes of respect, dignity and agency for the person with dementia. Another special thing about the book is that it contributes to understanding of brain health through a little Q&A at the end of the book (by Professor Ralph Martins) and some healthy recipes from Maggie Beer. In this way, the authors plant the idea that brain health starts young!

    Best of all, the book tells a story, all about Lucy, who is excited about going to her granddaughter’s wedding.

    I am Lucy and I dance with memories.
    Sometimes I remember.
    Sometimes I forget.
    Sometimes I remember that I forget.
    Sometimes I forget that I remember…
    My doctor says I have dementia.
    I wish I didn’t but I do.
    ‘Your brain has changed’, she says, ‘but you are still Lucy.’
    She knows that I have a brain AND a heart.

    Dancing with Memories

    Young readers will go with Lucy on her adventure: she gets lost on her way to the wedding, but a supportive community and local friends set all to rights again and by the end of the story, Lucy is dancing with her granddaughter, along with her memories.

    The illustrations are gentle, joyful and colourful and they help to centre the person with dementia within their family, home, and neighbourhood – which is as it should be.

    I would suggest that every doctor’s waiting room should have a copy of this book, as well as public and school libraries and places offering services to people with dementia and their families. It will go a long way to demystify the illness and allow kids to continue to love their family member or friend with dementia without feeling frightened or confused.

    An interview with the team behind the book can be found here, if you’d like to know more about the project.

    Dancing with Memories is published by HarperCollins in July 2022.
    My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.

  • Life: bits and pieces

    Travels with my mother XXIV: Postscript

    This is the twenty-fourth in my Travels with my Mother series. If you’ve not read earlier posts, this is the first one in the series for context.

    Grief is a strange companion. My mother died in late May. We had the funeral—thankfully with next to no restrictions—and then the Delta variant of Covid19 began to make its presence known in cities and even some regional areas around Australia.

    It has served, at times, as something of a distraction. The routines of the daily briefing from authorities on latest case numbers and new public health orders. Remembering to take a mask and do QR check-ins whenever I leave home. In reality, leaving home rarely, other than for a daily walk. Attempting to keep exercise levels up, along with a healthy diet. Sometimes, resisting the urge to open a bottle of red wine and / or a chocolate bar takes a lot of focus. Keeping busy; projects that require considerable time and attention now absorb my daylight hours.

    But other, older, routines still keep me company. Around 9.30 or 10 am each day, my hand wants to reach for my phone. That was the time I usually made my morning phone call to Mum. Mornings were best: by the afternoon her mind was fuzzier and she was tired. They were quick calls because Mum could no longer sustain a long conversation, apart from occasions when she would venture out on one of her ‘travel stories.’

    I remember quickly, of course. Mum is no longer there. And the space in my morning is filled with other tasks and activities. Sort of. That daily connection, while meant to nurture Mum and assure her she was not forgotten, was possibly just as important to me.

    My awareness of that Mum-shaped gap in the world is very real and, while the pain is not acute now, it lingers. Despite my knowing and understanding that her death was, as some told me, a ‘blessing.’ She had so little quality of life and comfort in her last weeks and months that I often wished she could just quietly sleep and not wake again. That’s almost what happened and for that I am grateful.

    There is much to be grateful for. Mum did not die from Covid, stuck in a Covid ward where her family could not reach her. She is no longer in a locked down situation in her nursing home, with no visitors or (at best) ‘window visits’ with her family. She does not have to experience the bewilderment brought about by the upheaval caused by this latest wave of Covid. I feel for every older person and their family going through these this right now.

    I am very glad about all of these things. But still I wish, sometimes, that Mum and I could go on one last travel together.

    Photos by Jess Bailey Designs and James Wheeler from Pexels

  • Life: bits and pieces

    Travels with my mother XXIII: The final travel story

    This is the twenty third and final post in the Travels with my mother series. If you’ve not read the earlier posts you may wish to go to the first one as it gives the context for the series.

    Thank you to all who have been following along on with Mum and I in the last years of her life. Her travel story came to a close a week ago when she died on Saturday evening. She had lived for 92 years. I think the best way to complete her story and pay tribute to the long and remarkable journey she had taken, is to post the eulogy I gave at her funeral yesterday (Friday 4 June 2021).

    Here it is:

    DOREEN’S LIFE

    Doreen was born in March 1929, on the precipice of the Great Depression. She was the eldest of three children born to Bertha and Harold.

    One of Doreen’s earliest memories was perching on the back of a borrowed truck with her father; her two siblings in the front with their mother and the driver. They were being evicted—like so many Australians at that terrible time, they could no longer make their rent. They were offered a small cottage on a plot of land at controlled rent in a new ‘charity’ estate in Sydney’s southwest, now the suburb of Hammondville.

    In 1940 Harold enlisted in the army. He lied about his age, dropping it by ten years. The desperate act of a father who needed a steady income to support his family. He was on a troop ship from Palestine to Singapore when news of Singapore’s fall to the Japanese shocked the world. His ship was sent to Sri Lanka instead, where he saw out the remainder of the war.

    Tragically, his wife became very ill and died while Harold was away. Doreen, aged 13, and her two siblings were considered too young to manage on their own and the three children were split up to live with different relatives. Doreen took from these years a fierce sense of independence, a belief that being a girl or woman should not stop her from doing the things she needed to do, a longing for family life, and a steely determination to make the best of things.

    Still in her teens, Doreen worked as a seamstress at a Surry Hills clothing factory, and moved in with workmate Norma , who was to become her closest and lifelong friend and her sister-in-law. She experienced a brief period of carefree youth: sewing her own frocks, dressing up for an occasional night out with her girlfriends, and beach picnics.

    It was Norma who introduced her to Doug, the brother of the man Norma was engaged to marry.

    Harold returned home from the war and Doreen, her brother and sister moved back to live with their father for a while. Doreen adored her father and they had a close bond.

    When Doug and Doreen married in October 1951, she made her own dress. No ivory satin or bridal veils for Doreen: her wedding outfit was a knee length frock in pale blue with a matching hat. A modest outfit for a very modest wedding, but also I think, in line with Doreen’s personality: pushing a little against the norms and expectations for women at the time.

    Doug and Doreen began married life with next to nothing. They moved to Bilpin for Doug to work at the service station there, with baby Karen and toddler Kris, renting an old workman’s cottage on Ghost Hill Road.

    Doreen, raised in the suburbs, now learnt to live in the country, drive a car, and be a mother, essentially through determination and gritted teeth. She ran the little café next door—known then as ‘Midways’. I came along in 1960 and six years later, we moved to an orchard and farmhouse at ‘Glenara’, outside the village. Now Doreen was also an orchardist who baked apple pies, made jams and jellies, and sold produce at the roadside fruit shop. In her ‘spare’ time she knitted and sewed clothing for her family, participated in community events and her children’s schools. Life was busy.

    For both Doug and Doreen, the little family they created became the all-important crux of life; the thing they worked for, struggled and sacrificed for. Neither had experienced stability in their own childhoods and they went all out to provide it for their daughters. Both had been denied a full education and it was important to them that we had that opportunity. They could rarely afford things that were new, not home-made or hand-me-down. But if any of us needed them, both Doreen and Doug were there. No lives go 100% to plan and through our ups and downs, our tragedies, disasters, joys and achievements, we all had reason to feel blessed to have those two as our parents.

    Glenara was eventually sold and we moved to a new house, designed and built by Doug and Doreen, in the Bilpin village. This was the first new house that Doreen had ever lived in and she’d made sure to include mod-cons like a dishwasher and a second toilet. After years of washing dishes in the café and home, and an outside toilet, I think she was entitled, don’t you?

    Doreen was now ‘retired’, which meant that she had more time for community events and also a chance to pursue her own interests. She took up pottery and later, lawn bowling. In typical Doreen style, she threw herself into such ventures wholeheartedly. She had a stellar bowling career, winning championships, becoming club President at Richmond, coach, umpire and selector.

    Her interest in genealogy, at a time before anything was on line, resulted in some fantastic work on our family history, tracing back to six convicts (and some free settlers) in colonial times.

    During those years she also enjoyed some travel, something her keen interest in history and geography suited her to. She and Doug went on a cruise to Fiji and Vanuatu, visited north Queensland and the Barrier Reef, and made a trip by Greyhound Bus across the western parts of the USA and Canada a few years after that. She travelled the Murray River on a paddleboat, took the ferry to Tasmania and camper-vanned through much of NSW. They took their camper to a hippie community in the bush near Glen Innes, to visit Karen who lived there in the 1980’s. When I lived for a short time on a remote island in the Torres Strait in far north Queensland, Mum and Dad began making plans to visit me there.

    She loved reading and we have always been grateful that our parents passed on their love and respect for books to us. A sounding board for ideas or problems big or small, Mum was my ‘go-to’ person to share news, to fine-tune plans, and to swap stories. She was also an avid movie goer;  I have very fond memories of movie outings and watching classic movies together on TV, especially seeing her all-time favourite movie, Gone with the Wind, at least several times together. We enjoyed many drama productions at the Joan in Penrith. These are all precious memories.

    Tragedy struck in 1994 when Karen was diagnosed with an untreatable brain cancer, and died three months later, aged 39. It was a shocking event that hit hard; Doreen coped by providing as much physical help and support as she could to her daughter and to Karen’s carers, and being the family bedrock. We stayed in a Brisbane apartment during the two weeks that Karen was in hospital there; I remember one night getting up and finding Mum, sitting in the lounge room, trying to smother her sobs with a pillow so as not to wake anyone.

    She was again a refuge of warmth and care when I landed on their doorstep, essentially homeless and penniless, with baby Dakathirr in my arms. We stayed with them for eighteen months and experienced the no-nonsense practical and emotional support that Doreen gave so generously.

    Doreen was an affectionate grandmother to her two grandsons, Alex and Dux. She loved her verbal spars with Andy, her son-in-law, and always liked to believe she had the upper hand. She became step-grandmother to David and Connor, and later Great grandmother to Liam and Aubrey.

    As Doug’s health began to fail, Doreen took on the role of his carer. After his death in 2016, her activities and horizons became increasingly limited by deteriorating eyesight, ongoing mobility problems and dementia.  Thankfully, she was still delighted when one of us walked through the door of her nursing home room.

    As many mothers do, Doreen had some oft-quoted aphorisms to guide her daughters through life. The one I most remember (and try to live by, not always successfully) is:

    There’s no use regretting decisions you make in life, as long as you make the best decisions you can with the information you have at the time.

    Doreen Newton

              Edith Piaf’s famous song, No Regrets, sums up Doreen’s attitude to life perfectly.

    We can forget, as we watch our parents age and witness the physical and mental ravages that time can inflict, that they were once robust young people with full lives ahead of them.  Their joys, passions and talents can fade over time and become invisible.

    Looking back over old photos, I was reminded of Mum’s fun-loving nature: she loved to dress up for events with her bowling club, for example; loved an occasional weekend away at a bowling competition with ‘the girls’; loved being at the beach with her grandsons on precious family holidays. She had as much fun on our day in Disneyland as I did. She and Dad taught us how to play cards and board games and it was an enduring pleasure of our times together to get out the Canasta cards or Pictionary game – a tradition which continued on with the grandkids.

    She was also someone who did not always ‘toe the line’: as evidenced by some of her less conventional choices and her determination that her daughters would have every opportunity in life, including ones that had been denied her due to poverty, family circumstance, or the fact that she was female.

    Doreen’s early life was hard, and the untimely death of her own mother meant that she entered married life and motherhood with little support and guidance. She learnt it all as she went along. None of that stopped her from being a committed, energetic mother, active in her girls’ lives and education. As a grandmother she carried on in the same vein, until frailty and infirmity got in the way.

    I like to think that Doreen has been a role model for me in my own life, and my experience of motherhood and now, grandmother -hood. It’s certainly something that I have aimed for.

    I am heartbroken that we have lost Doreen from our lives. Mixed with the sorrow is the knowledge that her last years were not happy or easy ones and that she no longer has to endure the difficulties of old age.

    I believe that those who die are never really gone if we remember them.

    I’d like us all to remember Doreen as she was before her illness: determined, smart, energetic and loving. It’s the best tribute we can pay to her.

  • Life: bits and pieces

    Travels With my Mother XXII: Go on, make that call

    This is the twenty-second in my occasional series I’m calling Travels with my Mother. If you’ve not read the first in the series, you might wish to have a look at that one as it gives the context behind these posts.

    This week my sister and I made the decision to disconnect Mum’s landline in her nursing home. Since moving into her new room there, she has forgotten how to answer the phone, or perhaps no longer registers the ringing as an incoming call. On top of that, she is rarely positioned in her chair or bed within easy reach of the handset. Paying $35 a month for a service that is no longer being used seemed wasteful and pointless. So, I closed the account and the line was disconnected.

    For some years now, I have spoken to my mother as close to every day as was possible: either in person when I visited, or a morning phone call. In the last couple of years the calls had by necessity got shorter: Mum’s span of attention on the phone diminished, as did her inclination to chat on. Prior to that, our conversations could be amusing, bewildering, or sad, depending on her mood on the day, or which particular fanciful byway her mind took us down.

    I will admit that some days, making the call was harder than others. I’d have to search for a topic of conversation: when an elderly person’s world has shrunk to the four walls of a room and they can no longer remember what happened an hour ago, this is understandable. I would try to talk about things I was doing, about the kids and grandkids – Covid lockdowns last year made that harder, too, because even for younger and healthier people, physical worlds shrank somewhat. And at times I’d be seized by a sense of guilt: was it fair for me to chat on about my activities, my life, when my mother had so little in her own? Irrational, I know, but still.

    Yet, over the past few days since the disconnection of Mum’s phone, I’ve gone to make my customary call and stopped short, remembering that it was no longer a possibility. I’ve had moments of thinking, That’s something I can talk to Mum about when I call her, only to remember: no phone line.

    You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.

    Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell

    So, if there’s someone in your world with whom you have not connected for a while – parent, sibling, aunt or uncle, old friend or new – maybe it’s time to reconnect? Pick up the phone, write a letter or an email, send a WhatsApp or Facebook message. Not only do we not know what a difference that contact can make in someone’s life, or in our own; we can absolutely never know when it will no longer be an option. Or indeed, what we’ll miss. Go on, make the call!

    Photos by Min An & Sound On at pexels

  • Life: bits and pieces

    Travels with my mother XXI: The Long Goodbye

    This is the twenty-first in my series called Travels with my Mother. If you’ve not read the first in the series, you might wish to have a look at that one as it gives the context behind these posts.

    Dementia is sometimes referred to as ‘the long goodbye.’ It is an apt description for the drawn out grief someone experiences as their loved one transforms from an adult who is competent in all the business of life, to a dependent who needs help with the simplest of actions. This is the process of dying, spread out over months and years.

    Thankfully, Mum still knows me when I walk into her room and say my name. The smile that appears on her face lights her whole room. It could light a city. Often it is accompanied by a shriek of joy; sometimes a tear or two. Then she settles back into her bed or recliner, grasping my hand. Of late, my visits are mainly about watching Mum as she dozes. I hold her hand or her arm. When I get up to fetch her a drink, or speak to a staff member, and once again put my hand on hers, she gives a faint smile and murmurs, ‘That’s better. Softer.’ I’m not entirely sure what she means (is my touch softer than the nurses’? or is she expressing pleasure at any touch?) It hardly matters. I just know she enjoys me touching her and that’s what I take from the interchange.

    It’s painful – agonising – to observe Mum struggle to sip and swallow a mouthful of water. Some day she can barely hold her head up. But she is calmer now than she was in recent months. I imagine that her inner self is giving up the struggle, relaxing into her helplessness. She is not happy, I’m sure. But neither, I think, is she actually unhappy. She is floating on a sea of something akin to oblivion, small wavelets of time lapping at her, rousing her occasionally to connect with whoever enters her room or speaks to her.

    The small expressions of joy at seeing someone she knows and loves have to be enough; indicators that my visits mean something. This morning, as I left her side, I kissed her forehead and told her,’I love you, Mum.’ She smiled back and I knew she was trying to say ‘I love you, too.’ I knew it; even though her speech is now impaired so much that getting even the simplest sentence out is a struggle. Her face, her smile, told me the rest.

  • Life: bits and pieces

    Travels with my Mother XX: a sporting career

    This is the twentieth in my series called Travels with my Mother. If you’ve not read the first in the series, you might wish to have a look at that one as it gives the context behind these posts.

    My phone conversation with Mum today began:

    ‘Morning, Mum. I hope you have sunshine through your window today?’ ‘
    It’s a lovely day and I’m waiting for a lift to Windsor.’

    ‘Oh? Where are you off to?’
    ‘We’ve got a play-off match today. The car will be here soon to pick me up, so I can’t chat long.’

    I knew then that Mum’s mind was re-visiting her many years of involvement in the sport of lawn bowls. If you know Doreen, or have read my earlier Travels With my Mother posts, you will know that lawn bowls is no longer a realistic option for her. This post is by way of tribute to that aspect of Mum’s life, post ‘retirement’ from her busy years as mother, manager of a fruit orchard and shop, contributor to her children’s schools and to her local community.

    Amusingly, when a family friend first suggested Mum and Dad try lawn bowls, she was indignant.
    ‘I’m not joining those fuddy-duddies!’ she’d exclaimed. ‘Those awful long white skirts and thick stockings they wear.’

    But try it she eventually did, and enjoyed it from the outset. She and Dad joined the Kurrajong Heights Bowling Club at first as they still lived in Bilpin, then when they made the move to Richmond they became stalwarts of the Richmond Memorial Bowling Club.

    Doreen and Doug Newton on their beloved bowling green

    Luckily for Mum, the uniform requirements did ease over the years, allowing ladies to wear white slacks in winter, and eventually softening into a lavender polo shirt and knee length skirt for summer.

    As was always Mum’s style, she entered her new pastime with determination and gusto and began to excel, winning championships, as well as playing socially, and travelling for weekend bowls competitions around the state.

    Ever the ‘organiser’, she also took on elected positions in her club and the wider Ladies Bowls organisation. She was a selector, secretary, president. She travelled by train to Sydney for training and exams to become both umpire and coach. She helped run the regular fund raising mornings to raise money for the local branch of the charity Legacy. Presidents’ Days and Veterans’ Days were conducted by a band of busy women, including my mother.

    Later in her bowling career, Mum bemoaned the leaching away of the community feel of her local club. Some of the younger members, she said, regarded it as nothing more than a sport, an outlet. Less important to them were those activities of the club that were precious to the older women: community involvement and service to others.

    Veterans’ Day, for example, was a long standing tradition where older bowlers, particularly those who could no longer play regularly, were honoured at a day of social games and lunch. Those who needed it were picked up and brought to the club for the day. Mum was one of those women who could often be seen driving an elderly lady to the special day. Sadly, in Mum’s view, the importance of these traditions began to fade over time.

    In the 1990’s Mum was proud to be recognised at a presentation night, along with lifetime friend and fellow bowler Gwen Cooper, for her contribution to the Hawkesbury district’s sporting community. Her organisational skills and commitment brought a great deal to the bowling scene locally and across NSW.

    So I heard with pleasure her plan to go bowling again this morning, and I hoped that in her mind the green stretched, smooth and inviting, before her.

  • Life: bits and pieces

    Travels with my mother XIX: Christmas 2020

    This is the nineteenth in my series called Travels with my Mother. If you’ve not read the first in the series, you might wish to have a look at that one as it gives the context behind these posts.

    As an appropriate end to a shocker year, my husband and I came down with a severe gastric flu, three days before Christmas. Our Christmas plans had been made with a wish and a prayer – who knew if any of it would eventuate, with new Covid outbreaks triggering fresh restrictions in some parts of Australia.

    Turns out we were right to be sceptical.

    We had to cancel our planned Christmas Eve lunch with Mum at an (open-air) cafe. That was to have been her Christmas celebration with her family, but we couldn’t risk her getting the illness we’d just had. There was nothing for it but to postpone.

    When I called Mum to break the news, her response was very much in line with her usual pragmatism and easy-going nature: ‘Of course you can’t come, love. I wish I was there to do something for you both.’

    She then went on to say, ‘I had a visit from my little daughter yesterday. I took her to visit friends at Bondi. She loves the water so she was excited to go to the beach. She had a lovely time.

    I admit that, along with relief that Mum didn’t seem too upset by the postponement of our modest Christmas celebration, there was a pang. Who was the little daughter? Was it me, or one of my sisters, going back half a century? Or a new daughter conjured from Mum’s imagination?

    It was strange, the sensation of being supplanted by a shadowy memory or a sibling who might not even exist.

    Relief won out, of course. I could be happy for Mum’s ability to travel where and with whom she pleased, despite her imprisonment in a body and brain in a long, slow decline.

    At least in her mind she was able to participate in a quintessential Aussie Christmas experience – a trip to the beach – with a little daughter who I may or may not have met.

    We’ll do our planned cafe lunch a bit later, perhaps in time to welcome in what will, hopefully, be a better year for all.

    Images by Olenka Sergienko & João Vítor Heinrichs at Pexels.

  • Life: bits and pieces

    Travels with my mother XVIII: Remembering the good

    This is the eighteenth in my series called Travels with my Mother. If you’ve not read the first in the series, you might wish to have a look at that one as it gives the context behind these posts.

    Recently I showed Mum several of her old school reports from high schools she attended during WWII, when her father was away on overseas service with the Army. There was a clue on two of them which told me where Mum was living and what was happening in her life at that time.

    ‘See here, Mum, where the parent’s signature goes?’ I pointed at the faded handwriting. ‘These two were signed by your grandmother. Your mum had died by this time and you were living with her mother.’

    Mum’s mother died in 1942 from a long illness and her three children were sent to live with different families because their father was not granted permission to return home from active service.

    Mum showed no recognition at her grandmother’s name or even at what must have been a traumatic time in her young life.

    I tried again: ‘Your grandmother was married to Bob then; her second husband. You always said you liked Bob; though not your grandmother so much. But you really liked Bob.’

    At that name, a warm smile lit up Mum’s face. ‘Bob was kind,’ she nodded.
    I said, ‘Do you remember why you didn’t like your grandma?’

    Mum stared into space for a while before shaking her head. ‘I don’t remember her. Just Bob. He was lovely.’

    This exchange left me wondering: was this another of dementia’s strange gifts: the expunging of difficult times and people, leaving only the good? Perhaps it was a transient phase of the disease. If so, at least it offered my mother the opportunity to recall someone whom she had loved and who had offered her a kindly presence at a difficult time.

    If only we could all remember the good a little more and leave behind those painful, unwanted or distressing recollections, at least for a time.

    #travelswithmymother

  • Life: bits and pieces

    Travels with my mother XVII: Living in the moment

    This is the seventeenth in my series called Travels with my Mother. If you’ve not read the first in the series, you might wish to have a look at that one as it gives the context behind these posts.

    As some Covid-19 restrictions began to ease at Mum’s nursing home, the family once again had the opportunity to take her out in her wheelchair to enjoy a (socially distanced and outdoor) cup of coffee. Several of us did so in the space of a couple of weeks, but when I asked Mum about these excursions, she had pretty much forgotten about them.

    At first I found this disappointing. I was so excited to be able to venture out with Mum after a seven month hiatus in which her contact with the outside world was through her window. It came as a blow to realise that for her, those excursions were momentary pleasures, forgotten soon after they occurred. And, if I am honest, it seemed a poor return on the effort involved – a round trip drive of nearly two hours and the walk to and from the coffee place – for about fifteen minutes of actually drinking coffee together.

    When I thought more about it, I realised that for Mum, the pleasure she takes from these times is now is in the actual experience of them: getting out in her wheelchair to see an expanded array of sights, feeling the sun and breeze on her skin, and having coffee with a loved one somewhere outside her room.

    The fact that she forgets it so soon after is probably irrelevant. So is the fact that she can no longer ‘look forward to’ something in the way she once would have done. She is truly and profoundly living in the moment, taking her small pleasures right then and there. Not before, not after. Just in the ‘now’.

    It’s a lesson for me. To let go of my own needs and assumptions and allow Mum to lead the way. To value the fifteen, or five, or however many minutes are enjoyable for her and to allow that to be enough motivation for the effort I put in.

    Truly, dementia is an exercise in living in the moment like no other.

    Image by Daniel Kux at pexels

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