I wrote this piece a few years back and Nancy Bowen illustrated it for me.   See more of her work here:
https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/nancy-bowen.html

Feathered Friends

The sign reads “do not feed the birds”

but sitting there he sees the words

as nothing he should care about

for in his mind there is no doubt

these are not pigeons at his feet,

his friends are gathered round his seat.

The men he worked with long ago

are memories he used to know;

his family has moved away,

he gets a card on Christmas day,

the hours are long yet years are fast,

he fills his time from seasons past.

So here he is, sat in the park

casting his bread crumbs in an arc

for Ginger, Bob, and Dusty too,

for Pet and Jane and Mary-Lou;

sharing his lunch and memories

among the friends he always sees.

Crocheting.


First twist the wool, form loop and grip,
Then take the hook and gently slip
It through the hole and wrap the thread
Around the hook close to the head.
Now smoothly pull both hook and strand
Back through; you have a stitch in hand.


Repeating hook and wind and pull
Until you have the pattern full
Completed there and now you see
How simple makes complexity
And one long string by twisted feat
Has now become a woollen sheet

Well, a third of one anyway. Only 66 more rows to go (about 20 hours more work).

The Demon Dementia

So here we go again.  Another attempt to blog.

Well, a lot has happened since I last dusted off my keyboard and peeped in here. 

My mother's dementia has got to the level where she doesn't know who she is or who I am.  She is still happy to see me but forgets I am there when she is not looking directly at me.  She now resides in a care home as she needs 24 hour supervision and care at a level I can not provide.  Sadly I am not know for my patience and one needs that to care for a dementia sufferer.

In the last month I have lost two of my cats to FIV related illnesses.  While it is hard to lose them at least they had a good end; far better than they would have had had they remained as the ferals they were before I adopted them.

It is a sad truth that life will end in death.  One of the saddest things is saying that last goodbye to someone we love.  However I find it far harder to deal with the slow erosion of self that has taken my mother.  While it is true that her body is still there for me to visit, that intangible thing that made my mother herself is gone.  The memories we shared are lost.  The connection that let us share laughter or sorrow with a glance is gone.  The person I visit has different tastes, body language and habits.  She behaves in a manner that she would have classed as inappropriate, laughs at people and makes rude or hurtful comments; things my mother would never have done.  My mother would not like the person she has become.

So, as Shakespeare wrote, "Who is Sylvia, What is she?

People say that we never truly forget, that memories are still there we just lose the ability to access them.  If this is true Mum still has all her memories yet the loss of the ability to access them has changed her dramatically.  So as we make our memories, we could also say they make us.  We learn to be who we are from what we experience.  When those experiences can not be remembered and the behaviours they result in disappear even from our habits, we become a different person.  We see this change happening as we watch people learn and grow; an adult of 25 is not the same person as they were at 5 years old, and yet that 5 year old can still be glimpsed in moments and actions, so they are not truly lost.  When dementia sets in this is not true.  The changes happen at a faster rate and you seem to lose the person you knew a little more each time you see them.  Worse still your own memories get overwritten and it becomes harder to remember the person as they were.

People have often said to me that with dementia you lose the person twice  For me this is not true.  I lose my mother every time I visit her.  And it hurts every time I visit her.