Memorable guideto unravelling dementia
What Dementia Teaches Us About Love Nicci Gerrard Allen Lane €23.80
If only, I think as I turn the pages of this wonderful book about dementia, it had been published a decade ago. I could have helped my mum rather than been terrified, repulsed, ashamed. I had no idea how to behave around her, or what the future might hold.
For ten years, I couldn’t mourn, as her body was still alive, though her mind was buried.
If I’d had this book, I’d have known she was still my mum, but different. I’d have read to her, played music, held her hand.
Having witnessed the slow death of her father John, Nicci Gerrard,
whose day job is writing thrillers, has spent years talking to carers, sufferers and scientists to find out how to cope with the disease we fear most.
She doesn’t shy away from difficult questions, such as that too many of us, due to medical advances, now live beyond our time: ‘We want to be remembered as independent,’ she writes, ‘not someone who constantly asks: “What did she say?”’
Best of all, she assigns no fault, heaps no guilt: brilliant minds are felled, so the notion we didn’t play enough chess falls flat.
Does this book teach us about love? There are numerous tales of sacrifice, kindness and patience. One sentence, though, strikes a chord: ‘It’s a two-body problem,’ a woman says of caring for her husband.
Ah, so that’s what love is. We’re in this together.
‘It’s a two-body problem,’ a woman says of caring for her husband