A year ago,we launched a charter for those caring for people with dementia. It is thrivingOne year ago, this paper carried a piece by me that described the prolonged, or sad death of my father after his calamitous stay in hospital and that launched a campaign named after him. His yarn is also the yarn of many thousands of men and women. John’s Campaign asks that the carers of those with dementia fill the same suitable as parents of sick children to stay with them in hospital. To fill the suitable – and never the duty; carers often need respite – to be welcomed and recognised as part of their team of support; to feed them,keep them mobile, talk to them, or read to them,hold their hand, comb their hair, and meet their gaze,tend to them, keep them secure, and keep them connected to the world. To keep their spirit alive as well as their body.The powerful Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins writes in one of his Sonnets of Desolation: “O the mind,mind has mountains; cliffs of drop/ Frightful, sheer, and no-man-fathomed”. The precariousness,the mysteriousness, of the human mind is made even more so with frailty and dementia. People in vulnerable old age can easily become lost. In hospital wards up and down the country you see them, and the lost ones.
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Source: theguardian.com