In what constitutes a treasure trove, my younger sister and I found my mother’s ox-tongue recipe at Xmas time. Complete with a robust raisin and ginger sauce, I cooked the pickled tongue and corned beef for a few hours in her huge, yellow enamel pot, the smell of cloves, celery, black pepper and bay leaves drifting through the galley-like kitchen of the flat. My mother was very much present in both our kitchens…

Earlier in the day, when walking down Kloof Street to Mrs. W (the supermarket), I recounted a story to my partner, starting with “when my mother was alive…”. I stopped dead in my tracks, shocked by my words for my mother is still very much alive! She spends her days in a 16-bed unit for Alzheimer’s patients, a few hundred kilometres away. What I expressed in those words is often associated with the process of saying farewell to a loved one suffering from a terminal illness, and that is often referred to as “living death”. I noticed the creeping onslaught of dementia about 4 years ago when my mother stopped sending text messages. She was an avid sender of messages, typing the abbreviated slang language of her granddaughters with her nimble fingers. Slowly she fell silent, becoming more absent.

I guess with some reading, and through deep and creative thought, I would be able to write a fine paper titled: “Becoming absent: a narrative approach to dementia”. (having read a lot, I’m still not sure why the Dementia is conflated with Alzheimer’s). But I don’t want to read more, or write much. We, the siblings find ourselves in a difficult, even traumatic process, as we are dealing with our father, who is in denial, surviving his stubborn indecisiveness, and his grief. He is 82 years old, and, until recently, her primary caregiver – they have been married for 57 years. What I know, that should I write something later, it will focus on embracing the dignity and full humanity of the person living with the Dementia (as opposed to dying from Alzheimer’s) – even if she makes a sandwich with a teabag filling, or starts crying all of a sudden, or having to wear adult diapers. And it will focus on supporting the primary caregiver and family – in some way, re-authoring some kind of alternative to the slow onslaught, the Falling Silent, the Becoming Absent…

Also see: Dementia Connections SA on Facebook |Alice Ashwell