Does Writing Prevent Dementia?
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Writers, is this one of the answers to memory loss?
My father, who passed away at the start of February this year, had been suffering with advancing dementia for the last few years of his life.
I explained my family’s experience in my article “Grief and Hope”.
The interesting thing was that he was the only one of his immediate family who had this debilitating illness. His father, who lived until 91, suffered from diminishing eyesight and hearing, and had cancer when he passed away. He was very sharp.
His mother, likewise, contracted leukemia, but was very sharp when she passed away.
His younger sister passed away from cancer last year, but was very aware, having many interests, including line dancing and breeding Cavalier King Charles Spaniels.
His younger brother, while suffering from decreasing mobility, does not have dementia — when I wrote my father’s eulogy, most of the information from his childhood came from him.
This led me to ask: why did my father have this horrible illness?
Possible answers
As I explained in my article, my very strong-willed mother was the dominant one in my parents’ marriage, and made most of the large decisions in my family, including the schools that my sister and I attended and where we went for our holidays. She was the parent who made the friendships. As she was a very conservative person (resistant to change), she was also the reason why the family’s 1960s model black and white TV was not ditched until it finally died in 1982 and a new colour TV bought (7 years after colour TV started in Australia).
Yes, that’s it below… RIP
My father followed her.
This extended to her refusing to accept technology. When retailers and doctors asked for her email address, she replied: “We don’t have one — we’re dinosaurs”.
As a result, after she passed away in early 2020, my father was left very much alone. Then along came Covid, with Melbourne (Australia) having the longest…
