What is it like to watch a loved one deteriorate with the onset of dementia? How does it feel to know that it is happening to you?A daughter’s honest and insightful account of her mother’s slow slide into Dementia with Lewy bodies and the mother’s thoughts as her internal journey gradually becomes her new reality.‘Over Streams and Squirrel Woods’ explores what can happen when reality becomes too painful, and the disconnection between people when they see and hear differently from one another. It is about boundless love, frustration, guilt and the inexorable inevitability of aging.Alys records her experience of Catrin’s illness, treatment and life in two nursing homes, provoking her to question what constitutes identity, self and the soul. In startling parallel is Catrin’s stream of consciousness, the clarity of which suggests that there is still power and creativity in the human mind and gives us hope that the descent is transformed not into pain and darkness, but into another life.It is not only an intriguing read for all of us who have had or might have to deal with those who suffer from dementia but also leads us to consider our own futures.“This is a valuable addition to the dementia literature, rewriting our expectation of what those with dementia can think.” John Suchet.
What is it like to watch a loved one deteriorate with the onset of dementia? How does it feel to know that it is happening to you?A daughter’s honest and insightful account of her mother’s slow slide into Dementia with Lewy bodies and the mother’s thoughts as her internal journey gradually becomes her new reality.‘Over Streams and Squirrel Woods’ explores what can happen when reality becomes too painful, and the disconnection between people when they see and hear differently from one another. It is about boundless love, frustration, guilt and the inexorable inevitability of aging.Alys records her experience of Catrin’s illness, treatment and life in two nursing homes, provoking her to question what constitutes identity, self and the soul. In startling parallel is Catrin’s stream of consciousness, the clarity of which suggests that there is still power and creativity in the human mind and gives us hope that the descent is transformed not into pain and darkness, but into another life.It is not only an intriguing read for all of us who have had or might have to deal with those who suffer from dementia but also leads us to consider our own futures.“This is a valuable addition to the dementia literature, rewriting our expectation of what those with dementia can think.” John Suchet.