Jeff Young recounts his poignant experiences caring for his father in the final year of his life, as dementia slowly erases his memories. He describes moments of fleeting lucidity sparked by simple objects like spoons, transporting his father back to past passions and identities.
My father, a handful of spoons and his journey into dementiaJeff Younghe days are long in Dad’s house in the last year of his life. He is mostly asleep in a hospital bed in the corner of the room, while I sit quietly on the sofa hoping he sleeps a little longer. I sit watching him, worrying he’s stopped breathing, listening to the radio playing pop songs that transform the room into a time machine.
He closes his eyes, as if he is closing down the vision of the garden and it occurs to me that these children arechildren. They are me and my two sisters. The room is almost silent, apart from the old songs and the slow breathing of the old man in the bed. I have the sense that the world we knew is disappearing. The children will stop playing in the garden before long.In the afternoons, we watch television shows about car boot sales and antiques.
We are each other’s companion, but we both feel lost and lonely now that my sister Kathryn has gone back to work. The days go on for ever and I feel like there is so much I don’t know about dementia, this strange and cruel disease. He doesn’t understand his own condition and neither do I, no matter how much I read about it.
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