Dementia Awareness Week

19th – 25th May 2025

There are more than 900,000 people in the UK living with dementia. 1 in 11 people over the age of 65 have dementia in the UK.

Dementia Awareness Week this year will take place from 19th – 25th May 2025.

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What follows is my personal story.

In early 2012, my 83-year-old mother, Betty, was diagnosed with two forms of dementia. To give Dad some respite from 24/7 caring, I, as the closest by distance of their children, came over for a morning once a week or once every two weeks. She was still Mum, but it was like her personality had been shattered and then stuck back together in random ways. She was always Mum, but the mixture of who she was was different; sometimes the caring, which was always a big part of who she was, was missing, but other times it was there. Sometimes this mix of parts of her personality changed while I was there. But she was always Mum.

At the start of 2013, I got a job. It was being unemployed that gave me the freedom to help care for Mum; but a condition of unemployment in the UK is that you must be actively seeking work. Soon after this, it was clear that Dad was having difficulty coping with Mum’s increasingly erratic behaviour; Mum was taken into care. Mum died in September 2016. Her dementia was thankfully short. She is still missed. I remember her as the great person she was before this terrible disease affected her personality.

Then it was the turn of my mother-in-law, also called Betty. She had been living alone in the Yorkshire Dales since 2006, when her husband Alan died. Despite having friends who would drop in, she felt the need to move back to Huddersfield to be nearer family. This was while I was still mourning Mum. From sheltered accommodation with a shared common room and help a string pull away. My wife went down to help her shower. On Sundays, we could be seen as a family in Holy Trinity Church, Huddersfield, sitting in a row, with my wife, mother-in-law, daughter and granddaughter, four generations of a family.

Dementia moves slowly, and eventually, she too went into care. She died in January 2019. She had been a great Christian witness in her lifetime.

While that was going on, Dad, Norman, was also showing signs of dementia. After Mum was gone, he was alone with the dog, but the dog was old and soon had to be put down. In this period of his being alone, we got the family round to celebrate his 90th birthday. A really happy time that I cherish. But dementia is slow but relentless, by January, he too was in care, being moved into his new home over Saturday to Monday on the same weekend that the mother-in-law, Betty, passed. I was helping my elder brother move Dad on Monday, feeling guilty that I was not helping my wife to grieve.

Dad is happy in his new home, at least that’s what he tells me, his capacity to be able to work things out is far better than his short-term memory, yet I’ve learnt a lot about his exploits in his late teens and 20s, a period in his memories where he lives mentally. He is still resilient, even though hr turned 97 last year, he spent his 92nd birthday in Huddersfield Royal Infirmary with COVID, but pulled through, making me ashamed that I had given up on ever seeing him again. I still visit him regularly, though it is at times difficult for me; the visits are for him, not me, and he shows appreciation of the visits, even if they are soon forgotten.

-o0o-

On the subject of dementia.

In early 2018, I tried to watch the film “Still Alice” about a woman with early-onset dementia. It was too good, too accurate a depiction. 17 months after Mum had passed was too short a time, and my emotions were too fragile. In tears, I switched the TV off. I still want to watch the film, but now is not the time. Not yet.

Having family members with dementia is like being in constant mourning, but with no closure. It keeps slowly taking people you love away. It’s like having constant mild depression with no light at the end of the tunnel. There can still be moments of joy, but there’s an element of grief that has come early; they are still here, but you have lost part of them already.