Forget Me Not by L.T. Smith

Author:L.T. Smith [Smith, L.T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ylva Publishing
Published: 2014-10-20T04:00:00+00:00

###

This story is dedicated to Barbara - my Mum

Born: 28 March 1933 Died: 16 August 2014

You will never be forgotten. I love you, Mum, and I am so very proud to be your daughter x

Acknowledgement

Dementia is one of the cruellest diseases I have ever had the misfortune to pay witness to. This disease doesn’t care how rich or popular or intelligent a person is—and age is not a factor. Dementia doesn’t care about anything but the systematic deterioration of a person’s mental capacity. It doesn’t just take away memories—short or long term; it takes away a sense of reason, reality, dignity, and safety. It strips its victim of the capability of doing anything for his or herself—feeding, washing, choosing what to wear, dressing…all the simple things in life we take for granted. All gone.

This disease takes the person before he or she is actually dead. This illness robs the victim of everything, even the safety of the world around them. Alzheimer’s, a branch of dementia, is a disease that changes the person you love into someone unrecognisable, someone tortured, someone who feels trapped inside a body she or he no longer recognises—and neither do we.

It is not only the sufferer who suffers. Family and friends go through each and every stage with them, experiencing with blinding agony as another part of their loved one is lost. Feeling useless and helpless becomes par of the course as the illness doesn’t just rip the victim apart, but does the same to everyone else involved.

My mother suffered from this debilitating disease since her diagnosis in August 2008. Six years of fighting every day to just function, but as we are all aware, Alzheimer’s is a progressive illness. Tasks that she had loved doing, like the washing of dishes, became another bullet point on her list of struggles. Reading, writing, watching TV—all things she would do to fill her day—were gone. The doors were locked from the inside to stop her wandering, day and night. She was a prisoner in a place she didn’t even recognise as home, with a man she only sometimes remembered as her husband.

And yet, even though all the attributes I had always taken as being part and parcel of my mum were gradually being eaten by a disease, she still smelled like my mum, still sounded like her…when the words would come. Still laughed like her when she felt safe. But with this illness, eventually even these things are taken away.

Forget Me Not is not just a story. It is an experience I wanted to share, an experience that was, at times, very difficult to write and even harder to edit. But even through this difficulty, I believed that maybe, just maybe, what I was experiencing could be the same as what someone else was going through. Then maybe, through this story, I could help someone see past all the agony of being in that situation—something that is very difficult to see past when you are so deeply immersed you believe you will never break through the darkness ever again.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.