What does it feel like to have dementia?

What does it feel like to have dementia?

1. I feel confused
2. I feel lonely and isolated
3. I feel afraid
4. I feel very frustrated and angry
5. I feel very tired
6. It’s a very hard struggle
7. I need kindness and humanity
8. I need acceptance
9. I need understanding not judgement
10.  I can’t remember things and this is very humiliating
11.  I can’t express  myself well
12.  I can’t think straight
13.  I need you to go slowly and gently with me
14.  I need prayer support
15.  I need to try and keep my sense of humour
16.  I am more than my illness
17.   I am a human being and the same person I always was
18.   A child of God
19.   I am a ‘human being’ not a ‘human doing’

Remembering Ita

Ita Geraghty was one of Dublin’s great characters. She hailed from the Inner City, I think. At least, she lived there when I knew Ita.

She had two fine grown up lads with whom I have lost touch. Her pride and joys.

She was a great woman to pray and help poor people. She had a really fierce sense of justice and gut level genuineness and was not afraid to speak her mind vigorously. We all got a bit of the lash of Ita’s tongue sometime or other.

Her own health was not great, I think she suffered a lot, which might help explain her frankness at times. Even saints run out of patience.

She was one of the great heart and soul people of the early Divine Mercy Conferences in the RDS which is how we became such great friends.

She had a great sense of humour and mischief and was no lover of pomp.

Her belly laugh still echoes in my mind. And the flash of her smiling eyes.

For some reason, her passing went by without much fanfare so now, a few years later, I am putting pen to paper to remember her on January 15^th, feast of St Ita.

Another of Ireland’s strong and vocal women.