We need to talk about dementia
My latest poem was painful but important to write...
I had a friend who, I’ll admit, I wasn’t always looking forward to seeing.
He had dementia, you see, so you never quite knew what you were going to get. On occasion he’d be the soul of wit, with a lifetime of fascinating anecdotes to recount from a lifetime of adventure. But more often, he’d be asking you the same three questions while recounting the same three stories, for hours on end.
Sometimes he wasn’t aware. Sometimes he was, and it was heart-rending to watch. Sometimes it was just achingly frustrating and I’d want to be anywhere else in the world, and then I’d feel guilty about feeling that way, and I’d remain in his company while both of us suffered.
I wasn’t by any means the worst victim of my friend’s dementia. People closer to him, trying to keep him safe (he’d forget how to balance), healthy (he’d forget to eat) and calm (the frustration would lead to massive temper episodes) had it far worse. And that’s not even touching on what it was doing to him.
Dementia is a cruel disease. And it’s difficult to talk about because it’s difficult to identify one’s position within the field of people affected by one instance of it. But we need to talk about it because people feel alone if we don’t, and it’s already lonely enough in a dementia diagnosis.
The second last time I saw my friend he was the centre of attention, funnier, sharper and faster than any of us, leaving us all in tears of laughter and joy. The last time I saw him, the following day, he couldn’t remember the previous night’s fun, and he couldn’t remember my name, and he only vaguely remembered me.
Not Really Me Not Any More.
