Forget Me Not

I was wandering through our local library last week and came across this intriguing exhibit:

The display was made up of 18,000 forget-me-nots, one for each individual living with dementia in Norfolk. It was Dementia Awareness Week and the library was running a host of creative events for dementia sufferers and their carers.

All sickness is cruel but dementia has got to be one of the cruellest of them all, robbing the victims of their very essence while their loved-ones look on helplessly. We know dementia. Liam’s mother was a victim and died from the inevitable complications of the disease. It’s ironic that as science and wealth has let our bodies survive beyond our allotted three score and ten, our minds often can’t keep pace. But there is hope. Just as cancer is no longer the death sentence it once was, there is every chance that science will one day halt and maybe cure the disease. A healthy older age is something we all want. And while we wait for that time to come, there are some amazing people doing some amazing things to make living with dementia just a little bit easier.

Jack Scott Imagine the absurdity of two openly gay, married, middle aged, middle class men escaping the liberal sanctuary of anonymous London to relocate to a Muslim country. I chronicled our exploits with the mad, the bad, the sad and the glad in a blog for the whole world to ignore. Then came the book which became a critically acclaimed best seller. Its success opened out a whole new career for me, firstly as an author, and now as a publisher. Who'd have thought it? Certainly not me. In June 2012, we ended our Anatolian affair and paddled back to Britain on the evening tide, washing up in Norwich, a surprising city in eastern England, then to the wilds of Norfolk as the only gays in the village. I’m sometimes nostalgic for our encounters with the hopeless, the hapless and, yes, the happy go lucky. They gave me an unexpected tale to tell and for this I thank them.

10 thoughts on “Forget Me Not”

Alan says:

21 May, 2017 at 10:23

what a grand symbol of support – bloody wonderful! Watched ‘Still Alice’ yesterday evening, well worth seeing if you haven’t already.

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1. Jack Scott says:
  
  22 May, 2017 at 09:47
  
  There’s Still Alice and Iris, both amazing films but we avoid them as Liam’s experience with his mother is still too raw.
  
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giddayfromtheuk says:

21 May, 2017 at 11:19

What a fantastic initiative. Dementia/Alzheimer’s is the disease that scares me the most when I think about ageing particularly after I watched Still Alice when it first came out (and cried…a lot). The Memory Book by Rowan Coleman is another poignant story in the same vein.
Thanks for sharing Jack

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Karen Hooper says:

21 May, 2017 at 22:17

Wow, that’s amazing.

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afish25 says:

22 May, 2017 at 17:40

I have an aunt suffering from dementia and her children are terrified. All we can do is love and take care of each other no matter the state of mind. Thanks Jack.

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1. Jack Scott says:
  
  22 May, 2017 at 17:56
  
  In some ways it’s worse for the families. Really sad.
  
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travelling crone says:

26 May, 2017 at 18:52

What a poignant sculpture, so fitting. Were they real flowers? If not what were they made of?

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1. Jack Scott says:
  
  26 May, 2017 at 23:23
  
  Yes I think they were real. Amazing really.
  
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backtobodrum says:

27 May, 2017 at 09:59

Horrid disease – hope someone shoots me if i get it.

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1. Jack Scott says:
  
  27 May, 2017 at 10:02
  
  Me too and in my case, I’m sure they’d be a queue! 😀
  
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