Show & Tell: When Silence Kills

Maybe a bit strange to bring up under Show & Tell but my grandmother (father's mother) passed away a couple of days ago. While I'm very sad, I also have a feeling of great relief as she was really suffering towards the end. She wasn't in pain but she was in the late stages of dementia and was also constantly tired. Both body and mind had had enough. And at age 89 it's okay to "give in".

What's most sad is that her quality of life in the last few years weren't that great. She was probably happy in many ways (and the staff at her care home took great care of her) but in an ideal world she would have had a healthy body and mind until the very end; we'd all want that, i.e. be super-healthy and active until we are struck by sudden death, preferably in our sleep. Unfortunately that's not how it ends, will end, for most of us.

Healthier lifestyles together with the advances of modern medicine (even though some people argue there are trends pointing the opposite direction) mean that most of us my age and our children will live longer than any generation before us, to 100 years old or even longer. But what modern medicine cannot help us with, as far as we know now, is the brain, and here I mean the brain as in the mind, our memory, our personality. Yes, there are medicines that can slow down the digression of the brain as well as food and techniques said to prevent dementia, but none of these are full-proof and at some stage they become useless. So our body might be ticking like a Duracell bunny while our mind is shutting down.

I do believe though, and this is where this week's theme comes in, that having an active social life and keeping the mind busy, can make body and mind match better. Even if "destiny"will catch up with us in the end, we can postpone the point of no-return. There is so much evidence telling us that when we don't have human interaction, we will die, even if we are otherwise healthy. There is a link between body and mind; the body will stay healthy longer if the mind is also healthy.

My grandmother had a lot of loving family members around her - until the early 2000s she lived opposite my parents and after that she moved briefly to a flat near my aunt, before she had to move to a care home five years ago or so - but she didn't have a partner (my grandfather died in the late 1980s) and gradually her group of friends shrunk (a natural but sad development as we grow older). As dementia sets in, even though the early signs are just visible to an expert, a person may also be less interested in social interaction, even though maintaining an active social life could be the most effective brake at this early stage. Thus, in many ways silence kills, albeit slowly.

I should have really visited by grandmother more over the last couple of years. Not that it would have stopped her dementia developing further, but still, it's something I feel bad about. When I saw her a few weeks ago I hadn't seen her since last year. In many ways I said goodbye a long time ago, or perhaps it was more of a gradual letting go. I was reluctant to visit her because I mourned the grandmother she was and that I wished she could have been until the end. She has been a very important person in my life and my favourite grandparent (if you're allowed to pick) and I have so many fun and happy memories - from hearing about her "wild" childhood full of mischief to our weekly "date" to watch "The House of Eliott" while sipping English tea - which I will tell you more about some other time.

No pictures today as I can't access the hard drive with our photos right now.