inspiring people
Sunflowers - Thomasina and her mum, Valerie.
My mother used to paint every day. She never had much money, so she bought cheap acrylic paints from a factory shop, and thin canvases that you could see the light through. When we tried to give her better quality materials, for her birthday or Christmas, she would protest. If the paint was expensive, she didn’t want to waste it on anything she felt equipped to produce. The poor quality of the paint and the canvases gave her licence to slap the paint around. To be free. And slap it she did. She never used brushes. Her pictures were created from hundreds of fingerprints and smudges. Daubs and swirls of colour building up a texture on the surface of the canvas and somehow through the chaos finding form in a face. She painted the same face over and over. A woman’s face. Often with her eyes cast down. An expression of quiet acceptance that perhaps life hadn’t been all that she’d hoped it would be, suggested by the tilt of the head and gentle shrug of a smile that hovered around the mouth. The smudges and swirls and daubs of colour raged behind and around the face, but the expression remained unchanged. There was a violence in the way she used the paint, a rage hurled out in colour and composition. She said it was her therapy.
And then one day she just stopped.
I didn’t notice it at first, but over the weeks when I suggested that she might want to paint again she said that she didn’t feel creative.
And a sadness fell on her, and she was cloaked in fear and depression as dementia took hold of her brain.
I visited my mother last week. In the home where she now lives. There was a picture on her windowsill, propped up against the glass. A huge sunflower that filled the paper, bright yellow and sprinkled with gold glitter.
It shimmered against a violet background. The painting held my mother’s signature anarchy of spirit and love of colour, but I had to ask,
“Who painted that?”
“I did. I think.” She said. “Isn’t it lovely?”
And it was. No angry jabs and stabs of paint, no disappointed face, nothing jarring. Just a glittering sunflower against a violet sky. And the joy on my mother’s own face showing it to me.
Grace Stead, one of Enrichment for the Elderly's directors is a co-presenter of the 'Dementia and Me' podcast with the BBC.
How do we connect when words are less or non existent?
What becomes important when a person you love cannot tell you about their experiences in the same way any more?
Dementia can challenge. Dementia can inspire.
Dementia can suddenly connect you.
When my Dad's Mum was diagnosed with dementia when I was a teenager, I didn't understand the dementia world I was plunged into. I didn't know how to connect, what to do or where to start.
Then my Nan on my Mum's side was diagnosed, I saw this as a second chance. A chance to connect. I worked hard to keep connecting, to keep being curious, to keep exploring through her experience of dementia which was often challenging and difficult, with her not behaving in a way that fitted the
'social norms'. We tried talking, baking, art, crafting and although we sometimes connected, that connection didn't last.
Then I noticed one day that she was singing. I reached for my phone, googling the lyrics. Trying to work out the song. I spent the next week learning the song and the lyrics. Having the song on every time I was driving or doing chores around the house. I was hoping that she would still remember the song when I sang it.
I got to her house, a little nervous that I might have spent a week learning a song she now no longer knew. I started to sing the first line. There was a few seconds before the next one and I was scanning my Nan's face for signs of recognition and connection. She looked at me, smiled and took a deep breath. Then she started to sing too. The smile, being part of something we were both sharing in that moment was truly incredible.
From then on, music was our way of connecting, of sharing, of being together. Nan helped me to learn new songs, new lyrics and new ways to connect.
Enrichment for the Elderly was set up whilst supporting both my Nan's with dementia, seeing the creative potential and wanting to inspire other people to connect with, not ignore people with dementia.
We now (amongst other things) deliver workshops for people with dementia, train staff to understand dementia better and help families to better understand how to support their person with dementia, all inspired by my experiences with my two Nans. We want to inspire people to connect to people with dementia and to continue to be curious.
In early 2020 we created the BBC dementia and me podcast to further spread the word around dementia.
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