It’s Dementia Action Week, and although I’m not the Beth Spencer who is a dementia specialist and has written lots of books and articles on this (one of the suprisingly many Beth Spencers out there who are writers), it is a topic I have explored in my writing several times and probably will again.
Here’s a poem (above) I wrote back in my 20s, when getting old was definitely not on my radar, but I did feel very moved by a story told to me by a boyfriend who was a nurse at an old people’s home in Surrey Hills.
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I’ve also written about my mother in a piece called Forgetting. This was originally a part of Vagabondage — living in a campervan the idea of home and belonging and identity takes on a new urgency.
Then it was produced as an audio piece for Radio National, and reprinted in The Age of Fibs. So you have probably/possibly already heard or read it, but here it is in case.
(And sharing this time with love and thoughts for my brother Noel, who is currently living in the same residential care home that Mum was in before she died. )
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Here’s some excellent links and resources from Arts Hub about the importance of the arts and creativity for the way we age and respond to cognitive changes:
Also - the Museum of Contemporary Art has a special dementia program for carers and those they love — - the National Gallery of Australia has weekly online events — — and the NSW Art Gallery has events too. And if you google near to where you are I’m sure there are lots more great resources.
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Finally, music and movement is great for our brains, so you might like to dance or move and stretch along to this one :
Thank you for being here,
xx Beth
Long weekend at the Gertrude Abbott