Tag Archives: dementia

Dum Spiro, Spero

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I’ve just been reading a Spink auction catalogue for a forthcoming sale of Roman coins. It includes the description” otherwise with an exceptional, sumptuous honey-blue tone
overlying lustrous and largely original fields, all providing a fitting frame for the classic Tiberian visage”. Estimate is £3,000 – £4,000, so I suppose you have to employ the top drawer vocabulary for that class of coin.

You can, of course, find Roman coins for as little as £3 on eBay, but remember that this price is a reflection of the condition and rarity. They are common and they are clapped out and if you have a metal detector you are in with a chance of digging one up. The Romans were very careless about the way they buried them all over the place. They also buried things like the Water Newton Treasure. It’s not, in my mind, as good as a hoard of coins, but it seems to excite museums. We are actually living on the outskirts of the Roman town of Durobrivae and slap bang in the middle of the known pottery kiln area. For more detail, try here.

Silver Britannia coin

That was discovered seven miles from where I’m sitting. But closer than that are the remains of a Roman fortress, a villa, Roman pottery kilns and a cemetery. There are also Saxon and Iron Age sites, and we are slightly under 10 miles from Flag Fen if you fancy something Bronze Age.

Sorry, I’ve rambled off the point. In fact I have lost sight of it and can’t actually remember what it was going to be. I think, as I recall the title, it was going to be about how writing about things, particularly the coins and research, keeps me going and how I hope it will help to avert  dementia. Of course, it could have been about how much history is still underfoot  I have been thinking about that lately too.

The title? Now there’s a question. Do I offer a translation? If I do, I look condescending, if I don’t, I look elitist, assuming that everyone did Latin at school. In the end, it’s a common enough motto to assume that most people know it. This, of course, is a problem I sometimes have with poetry. I really dislike poems where the poet feels they need to explain with a footnote. If the poem needs a footnote to make it work, it’s a bad poem. Ideally it should work without me knowing all the details, and work even better if I do.

Anyway, that’s what Google’s for.

Pictures are a random selection.

Ruined aisle – Crowland

A Haibun about Jigsaws and Dementia.

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This is my entry for the British Haiku Society Haibun Competition. It was either successful (because it was  honourably mentioned), or unsuccessful because it didn’t win. It has been mentioned on the website and is in the latest edition of Blithe Spirit, and the final haibun is quoted, so I presume it is now OK for me to reprint it. It is the second haibun I have written, featuring Dad and jigsaws. As some people have written books and plays about such things I suppose two haibun is not excessive, but it does worry me that I go back to old subjects – at what point does it become boring. That’s the reason I’ve generally (but not entirely) avoided COVID – we are all living through it, how many poems do we need?

Falling Into Place

years pass
children become strangers
—his new world

Jigsaws became an important part of our lives. First, as conversations became more difficult, we used them to pass the time. Later we used them to stimulate Dad’s thinking and slow the progress of the condition. Finally we used them to measure his decline. A man who once ran a company struggled with a jigsaw designed for a toddler. My sister bought new ones as they were needed, each with fewer pieces than the one preceding it.

He had been an active and successful man, and thousands of events had formed his life. Gradually they faded away. This frustrated him in the beginning but as he sank into the strange new world of dementia he came to accept it as a comforting place. I was happy to see him become contented. Then, one day, he asked me who I was.

the mirror cracks
a fractured smile
released


When we cleared his room my sister picked up the nine-piece jigsaws and suggested we donate them to the care home. She checked with me.

“You don’t want them, do you?”

“Not yet.” I say.