Moira and the town that society forgot
I went to Kempsey to visit my great aunt before she goes off to have a growth removed from her abdomen.. Visiting people with dementia and alzheimers is at turns upsetting, depressing, scary, funny and boring.
Upsetting as she was always such a strong woman. I remember being told the story about how my mum and two great aunts stopped their car to help out a man who was being bashed in an alleyway by three large islanders. They wouldn't back down even when the assailants said they would bash them too. Yesterday she kept asking why she had been chosen as the last out of her siblings to die. My parents and I had no answer to that.
Depressing as it brought up thoughts of mortality and decline in general.
My new big fear is diminishing cognitive capacity. I briefly thought that it may be a blessing in disguise, a mental buffer to ease the dissapointment of a body that is rapidly giving out on you. But i think it really just left her in a state of lonelyness, confusion and desperation. I am about to begin compiling information on current thought about alzheimers, dementia and senility and see what suggestions are being made to prevent their onset.
The funny times came through her repetition which would shame a sitcom and the excessive use of profanity to mask a greatly diminishing vocabulary. My relatives (on both sides of the tree) were always world class swearers.
And finally the boredom of kempsey, the boredom of the nursing home and the boredom of a life waiting for death.
Kempsey really is an awful place for someone like me. My thoughts are that the moment they no longer required the river to transport dairy milk they should have torn all the huts down and departed to other locations.
The 5 hour drive gave me plenty of time to read however. I read some Edgar Allan Poe stories i had always meant to get around to reading and was underwhelmed for the most part. I have been spoilt for choice in my life by macarbe and mysterious short stories and felt that they didn't have much to offer me except as overdrawn well written historical curios.
I then began to read Raymond Chandlers The Big Sleep which is the granddaddy of the hard boiled detective story. I am 3/4 of the way through and in love. I am a definite fan of the hard boiled character be it Batman, The Question, Sam Spade,Tom Reagan or the anti heros of Sin City. And Phillip Marlowe, the Protagonist of the book, is a premier example of this type of character.
I dont know why i can never finish a long post......
Upsetting as she was always such a strong woman. I remember being told the story about how my mum and two great aunts stopped their car to help out a man who was being bashed in an alleyway by three large islanders. They wouldn't back down even when the assailants said they would bash them too. Yesterday she kept asking why she had been chosen as the last out of her siblings to die. My parents and I had no answer to that.
Depressing as it brought up thoughts of mortality and decline in general.
My new big fear is diminishing cognitive capacity. I briefly thought that it may be a blessing in disguise, a mental buffer to ease the dissapointment of a body that is rapidly giving out on you. But i think it really just left her in a state of lonelyness, confusion and desperation. I am about to begin compiling information on current thought about alzheimers, dementia and senility and see what suggestions are being made to prevent their onset.
The funny times came through her repetition which would shame a sitcom and the excessive use of profanity to mask a greatly diminishing vocabulary. My relatives (on both sides of the tree) were always world class swearers.
And finally the boredom of kempsey, the boredom of the nursing home and the boredom of a life waiting for death.
Kempsey really is an awful place for someone like me. My thoughts are that the moment they no longer required the river to transport dairy milk they should have torn all the huts down and departed to other locations.
The 5 hour drive gave me plenty of time to read however. I read some Edgar Allan Poe stories i had always meant to get around to reading and was underwhelmed for the most part. I have been spoilt for choice in my life by macarbe and mysterious short stories and felt that they didn't have much to offer me except as overdrawn well written historical curios.
I then began to read Raymond Chandlers The Big Sleep which is the granddaddy of the hard boiled detective story. I am 3/4 of the way through and in love. I am a definite fan of the hard boiled character be it Batman, The Question, Sam Spade,Tom Reagan or the anti heros of Sin City. And Phillip Marlowe, the Protagonist of the book, is a premier example of this type of character.
I dont know why i can never finish a long post......