Endless Love
The cruel decline from dementia spares neither the sufferer nor those around them.
My father was the headmaster of Robert Gordon's College in Aberdeen for 18 years, conceiving and overseeing the transformation of the school infrastructure and making it the largest co-educational private school in north-east Scotland. Michael Gove was also one of his pupils.
With a double first in classics from Edinburgh University, he played rugby to a senior level including as part of Daniel Stewart's 1959 Murrayfield, Hawick and Jedforest Sevens winning side and a trial as hooker for Scotland before injury stopped his career prematurely shortly after. Fluent in German, Ancient Greek and Latin, he could also fly an aircraft, as well play a variety of sports. My mother and my father met in 1957 and married in 1962 and have been devoted to each other since. My mother trained as a nurse at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and rose, even part-time, to be a clinical teaching nurse in Aberdeen.
Following the traditional roles of the times, she provided my father with the support behind the scenes that allowed him to concentrate on his work for the school. My mother lacks my father's formal qualifications but her innate intelligence and practicality mean she has identified medical problems with unerring accuracy, months before modern medicine has managed, as well as be a near perfect mother.
My father was diagnosed with dementia almost exactly 6 years ago in 2016.The driving licence went in 2017, followed by his ability to communicate properly in 2018 and his ability to live independently in 2019. In 2020, as covid struck, the burden on my mother of his sole care became too much even for her and he went into a residential home as an emergency. His decline was probably exacerbated by the imposed isolation of the pandemic restrictions; not one minute of my mother's company in 6 months, let alone the ten Boris got for his birthday cake.
With restrictions lifted, and my mother recovered in part from her heavy burden, my mother has resumed her love, devotion and care for my father even though he no longer understands concepts such as a marriage or a wife as his great mind is obscured by a permanent blinding fog. Like Greyfriar's Bobby, my mother selflessly devotes herself to him still despite the personal cost to her.
I despise dementia and what it has done to my father and by extension my mother. I do not wish to remember my father as this human husk and to record his decline. Taking his picture when he has no understanding of a camera and what I am doing seems uncomfortably intrusive. Equally, sharing this picture on Flickr has been a difficult dilemma. However, their Endless Love deserves to be celebrated despite the cruel bitter blight of a disease that strips all its victims of all dignity.
My father will be 86 on Thursday but it will mean nothing to him.
[My father passed away finally, almost 8 years after his diagnosis, on 12 October 2023. A merciful release for him and his own "Greyfriars Bobby", my mother, who dedicated herself to him until the very end.]
[This photograph made it into In Explore in 2022 but Flickr zeroed all my pictures by reclassifying them as Restricted having identified that I inadvertently had not made 30 photographs of the London Naked Bike Ride marked as Moderate/Restricted by me out of 3900 photographs. This removed them from all Groups instantly without any prior warning or threat and despite my remedying the issue immediately I became aware of it. As a consequence all my Groups have been removed and, despite Flickr reclassifying them all as Safe; Flickr cannot apparently restore them to their Groups meaning I have to go through literally thousands of pictures to add Groups.
Truly Draconian : You have been warned.]
Endless Love
The cruel decline from dementia spares neither the sufferer nor those around them.
My father was the headmaster of Robert Gordon's College in Aberdeen for 18 years, conceiving and overseeing the transformation of the school infrastructure and making it the largest co-educational private school in north-east Scotland. Michael Gove was also one of his pupils.
With a double first in classics from Edinburgh University, he played rugby to a senior level including as part of Daniel Stewart's 1959 Murrayfield, Hawick and Jedforest Sevens winning side and a trial as hooker for Scotland before injury stopped his career prematurely shortly after. Fluent in German, Ancient Greek and Latin, he could also fly an aircraft, as well play a variety of sports. My mother and my father met in 1957 and married in 1962 and have been devoted to each other since. My mother trained as a nurse at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and rose, even part-time, to be a clinical teaching nurse in Aberdeen.
Following the traditional roles of the times, she provided my father with the support behind the scenes that allowed him to concentrate on his work for the school. My mother lacks my father's formal qualifications but her innate intelligence and practicality mean she has identified medical problems with unerring accuracy, months before modern medicine has managed, as well as be a near perfect mother.
My father was diagnosed with dementia almost exactly 6 years ago in 2016.The driving licence went in 2017, followed by his ability to communicate properly in 2018 and his ability to live independently in 2019. In 2020, as covid struck, the burden on my mother of his sole care became too much even for her and he went into a residential home as an emergency. His decline was probably exacerbated by the imposed isolation of the pandemic restrictions; not one minute of my mother's company in 6 months, let alone the ten Boris got for his birthday cake.
With restrictions lifted, and my mother recovered in part from her heavy burden, my mother has resumed her love, devotion and care for my father even though he no longer understands concepts such as a marriage or a wife as his great mind is obscured by a permanent blinding fog. Like Greyfriar's Bobby, my mother selflessly devotes herself to him still despite the personal cost to her.
I despise dementia and what it has done to my father and by extension my mother. I do not wish to remember my father as this human husk and to record his decline. Taking his picture when he has no understanding of a camera and what I am doing seems uncomfortably intrusive. Equally, sharing this picture on Flickr has been a difficult dilemma. However, their Endless Love deserves to be celebrated despite the cruel bitter blight of a disease that strips all its victims of all dignity.
My father will be 86 on Thursday but it will mean nothing to him.
[My father passed away finally, almost 8 years after his diagnosis, on 12 October 2023. A merciful release for him and his own "Greyfriars Bobby", my mother, who dedicated herself to him until the very end.]
[This photograph made it into In Explore in 2022 but Flickr zeroed all my pictures by reclassifying them as Restricted having identified that I inadvertently had not made 30 photographs of the London Naked Bike Ride marked as Moderate/Restricted by me out of 3900 photographs. This removed them from all Groups instantly without any prior warning or threat and despite my remedying the issue immediately I became aware of it. As a consequence all my Groups have been removed and, despite Flickr reclassifying them all as Safe; Flickr cannot apparently restore them to their Groups meaning I have to go through literally thousands of pictures to add Groups.
Truly Draconian : You have been warned.]