My father’s role in life was the protector, the carer. Now he needed our protection and care
lost his way (but we all do that). Scraped the car against a gateway. Left the key in the lock. When we asked him the time and he told us the cricket score (but he always was absentminded). W e didn’t talk about it at first. When is the point a t which you say: “Do you
The writer Nicci Gerrard think that something is wrong, that your memory is beginning to fail you?”
There came a time when we all knew. He went to see a doctor. He had his memory test. Eventually, he received the sentence, hedged about with reassurances and strategies and tact, but there it was nonetheless: you have dementia.
My mother is a fighter, she believed that together they could face down the disease and beat it. My father is a stoic. (Was a stoic.) He believed you must simply, and with dignity, endure what life hands you.
His role in life had been one of steady competence – he was the protector and now he needed our protection, the carer, and now he needed our care.
He didn’t fall apart or articulate his fears, but every so often he took to his bed, to lie under the covers, shaking.
Life went on around him – the hum of the vacuum cleaner, the rise and fall of voices, the chink of cutlery, a phone ringing somewhere, a dog barking, the
smell of baking, of garlic frying, my mother coming softly into the room and standing beside him – and he would lie there until the shaking stopped.
The story of dementia is also the story of those who care for people living with the illness. And if people with dementia are missing people, so too are their carers. In the UK, one in eight adults are carers (that’s 6.5 million people), and almost 60% of these are women.
The carers of people living with dementia make up a large portion of this vast, invisible army.
My mother never had to become my father’s “carer”. She remained his wife, living with him and loving him as he inched towards self-loss.
In the final, terrible year she could not possibly have looked after him: she was in her 80s, disabled by chronic back injuries and registered blind.
A rota of professionals came in to do the jobs – lifting, cleaning, dressing and undressing – that are so bodily and for many intimate carers so distressing. So, by and large, she remained his wife he her husband. She was lucky in t
My father loved home. Although most vivid memories in his deme years were of being carefree and u tached, in unfamiliar places, he w homebody. My mother is an explor heart, often restless, but my father l returning to his place of safety.
Above all, he loved his garde planting, weeding, pruning, ma bonfires, identifying insects and w flowers, watching small birds in undergrowth, getting his hands dir
In his dementia years, the famili of home was increasingly importa everything in its right place, everyt known, the shape of the da comforting repetition, the clock on wall showing the time, the flowers plants outside marking the season
My father’s dementia was q advanced before he left home for a weeks, to have his leg ulcers healed
He came back a month later, bu never came home. He never came h