23 Sept 2011

My Mum has dementia - What a joke!

It's cruel to watch the very people who taught you to tie your shoelaces and read a book slowly 'unlearning' and forgetting. The few unrelated things that rattle around are often repeated, and I mean often.
I was invited by Jeremy Hughes, CEO, on World Alzheimers Day to an Alzhiemer's Society Awareness lunch in Canary Wharf earlier this week, hosted by KPMG (great lunch!), with representatives from Credit Suisse, HP, and others. The surprising  thing was that these people were not there to tick their company's 'social responsibility' box but many had personal experience of witnessing a parent or grandparent slowly disappearing to leave, like the Cheshire Cat, only a grin. . . . which brings me back to my Mum.
She remembers a joke, just the one. The problem is that she forgets who she has told this joke to and when. She has been telling me and the rest of her family this joke for at least 5 years and sometimes, over a sweet sherry in the pub, she has told me this joke 5 times in an hour.
As my Mum's grin is becoming all we have left of her, I thought I'd share it with you.
For the sake of your children, please start practising a better joke because it is likely that we will all end up sitting around telling jokes.

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