World Alzheimer’s Day

Difficult to write anything about World Alzheimer’s Day without what happened to my mother, Sheila, entering my thoughts. In the months immediately after she was killed I’d have snapped back at anyone promoting the naively upbeat (my words) “you can live well with dementia” mantra with a “yes and you can die badly with it too!”

But now, nearly four years later, I’m more inclined to agree with the positive message. Why? Because time heals. Because happier memories seep back. Because a lifetime is defined by its entirety, not just the last few, violent hours. And there’s another reason: people.

In my experience (call me naively upbeat) most people are good. It’s just bad people hog the headlines. So today I’d like redress the balance a little. Here are just some of those whose goodness has touched me, my mother and family…

• The taxi driver who drove my mother home for free after spotting her walking alone at night along an unlit and pavementless main road.
  
• The hairdresser who beat everyone to a dementia diagnosis for mum after alerting us to a series of missed appointments.
  
• The village shopkeepers more concerned about the contents of mum’s shopping basket than her wallet.
  
• The nurses and doctors who treated her with respect and dignity.
  
• The care home staff who sang, danced and spoon fed her.
  
• Friends who unfailingly asked after her or visited her.
  
• People who, after my mother’s death, offered their advice and support freely and without question. Many of those same people now support the pressing work of shutthatdoor.com

And I’d add to the list even those I initially and simplistically described as “baddies” because it was on their watch that my mother died. They went beyond acknowledging their individual and/or organisational shortcomings. They did more than apologise. They learned lessons, took action, made changes that make dementia care better. What’s more they continue to do so.

I value these people right down to the perpetrator’s family who also grieved when their mother died not long after my mother and continue to bear the additional burden of knowing she had taken another woman’s life.

All these things and more contribute to a genuinely dementia-friendly society.

That’s not say bad things won’t continue to happen. Only this morning I’ve been supporting a family whose mother was killed in a care home in circumstances shockingly similar to my mother’s death. But good people doing good things can lessen the pain and hurt. Good people doing good things can improve the way we care for those living with dementia. Good people doing good things helps counter all the bad things happening right now. Something to hope for. Not hopeless.

A cause for optimism and why I wish you all a happy World Alzheimer’s Day. An odd use of the H word I’ll grant you. But the right word today especially.

Pic of mum as a young woman looking happy (see, there’s that word again).