My age-
9 - 14 Grandmother's dementia
15 - 25 Father's dementia
27 - 32... Sister Jacqueline's ongoing Alzheimer’s
I was born when my father was 70. My grandmother (mother's mother) was 72. When her husband died she moved into a bungalow in our village, and gradually began to lose her memory. She moved to an old people's home in the next village where I remember her sitting by the window all day, blissfully content re-reading the same book, watching the cows going back and forth to be milked, and sipping her sherry and smoking Moore Menthols in the bath.
When she died it was soon Dad's turn to forget. I remember my mother desperately trying to save her plants from his secateurs when he decided to hack up the garden in the wrong season. When I was 17 he forgot who I was for the first time. As he became older and more confused his wonderfully kind nature became one of the hardest thing to cope with. His desire to be helpful meant that he would endlessly try to get up to see if he could be of assistance when he could no longer walk safely. Trying to persuade him to sit and rest was very difficult. My mother and the care team she assembled around her were unbelievably patient.
He died aged of 95 and a couple of years later my half sister Jacqueline was suddenly diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at the age of 62. For several years I found it strange the way she would repeat the same story over and over again while seemingly having complete control of everything else, but it wasn’t until a friend dragged her to a specialist that it became clear that something was wrong. Now she lives alone in the mountains in Provence, dependent on helpers, overfeeding her beloved cat Max, churning out exquisite patchwork quilts for the people who help look after her, afraid to walk beyond the dustbins at the end of her garden in case she might get lost.
She was a highly intelligent and independent woman, a high powered interpreter living in Paris. She introduced me to many books and got me thinking about many things. My brother and I both owe her a lot.
She was a highly intelligent and independent woman, a high powered interpreter living in Paris. She introduced me to many books and got me thinking about many things. My brother and I both owe her a lot.
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Its interesting to chart the effect on us of witnessing memory loss / identity loss. I watched my nana deal with early dementia at 60yrs of age. she'd always seen life from a different angle to everyone else we knew (convinved we were descended from aliens and kept tights in the cutlery draw / down sofa - just so they were handy) and as a consequence we didnt realise she had dementia until it was quite advanced ( we found mince down the sofa and in the cutlery draw). when we did realise it didnt really stress us out too much - we just got into her new world with her. her husband, who was 10 years younger was her main carer and died one year after her death (he was 55)
ReplyDeleteI cared for her sister when she had dementia (at 80)- watched her turn from a bitter, controlling woman with a pristine house and garden, a woman who never got over the loss of her husband and child or the shame of "causing a divorce" in the 40's - into a loving woman who stroked weeds and sang in the street. A woman who forgot that she smoked and forgot that she didnt like people. unfortunately her liberation from fear eventually ran in parallel to my growing sense of fear - how to protect her from harm and ease her journey from independence, how to make sure that the care system didnt rob her of her dignity.