‘I’ve finally got someone who is there for me’
NATIONAL LOTTERY-SUPPORTED PROJECT READING FRIENDS HELPED DENISE LOWE OVERCOME THE ISOLATION CAUSED BY HER HUSBAND’S DEMENTIA
ERY Tuesday morning Denise Lowe sits with a cup of tea, waiting for her phone to ring. The 61-year-old
Rugeley, Staffs, looks forward to chatting with a woman she’s never met, but who has become her “lifeline”.
“I filled in a form to get help with my food shopping and got a call asking if I’d like to join Reading Friends as well,” says Denise, who cares for her husband Gerald, 75, who has vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s.
Denise wasn’t sure the UKwide project funded by The National Lottery and developed by The Reading Agency, was for her.
“I told them I’m not really a reader, but they said, ‘ Well maybe you need someone to talk to? Maybe they could read to you?’”
Soon after, library assistant and creative arts therapist Monica Cru-Hall, 42, from Staffordshire Libraries and Arts Service, called her. Monica joined Reading Friends in March when the pandemic closed her library.
“When Monica called, I was in a state of depression. I didn’t want to get up in the morning,” says Denise.
“People with vascular dementia can get quite angry. I’ve lost all my friends because they don’t like the way Gerald is. And where I used to be able to take him around the shops just to get out of the house, coronavirus stopped all that.
“Monica reads poems and we chat about all sorts. Her voice, her whole manner, is relaxed. Talking to her feels so natural. I’m not a big one for telling anybody anything but she draws me out.”
It’s thanks to the £30million* you raise weekly by playing The National Lottery that projects such as Reading Friends can help people like Denise.
“What surprised me was the power of a phone call,” says Monica. “And the connection you get from talking once a week.” Denise adds, “I’ve finally got someone who is there for me. At the end of the first lockdown, I said, ‘ You’re not going to phone me now’ and Monica said she would for as long as possible. I said, ‘Until the day I die, please’.”
‘Her voice, her whole manner, is relaxed and talking to her feels so natural’