There is no past
Remembered
Or future
Imagined.
Just the present.
Tense.
A singularity.
You live in the moment. Very on point as they say.
Content (or so I hope) sucking tea from a sippy cup
Or shredding tissues in your lap
While I am walking an imaginary dog (the one I was convinced would persuade you to let me have a real one for my 13th birthday)
Searching for something
Like a long forgotten book
Cursing that it’s always in the last place you look
And hearing you laughing
In that slightly hurtful grown up way of yours:
Of course it is! Because when you find it
You stop searching.
Finding something, I say: Remember that time…
…before trailing off.
Both of us lost to thought.
Three years since my mother, Sheila, died after she was brutally beaten by another resident in her Luton carehome. Memories of happier visits before that day are still vivid. It is possible to live well with dementia. But it’s a bastard disease for those who watch the fading of the light.