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Jump to navigationJump to searchBeloved Old Age and What to Do About it: Margery Allingham's the Relay by Margery Allingham and Julia Jones (view source)
Revision as of 04:20, 3 July 2016
, 04:20, 3 July 2016no edit summary
I don't think that I've ever before read a book where the title struck terror into my heart. I'm dealing with my own old age by denying it, suppressing any evidence to the contrary and more than twenty years after the deaths of my parents I'm still struggling to come to terms with all that happened in the final decades, with psychosis, personality disorder and depression suffered by one parent and dementia by the other. Even decades later and knowing, logically, that there was no more that I could have done I am sometimes overwhelmed by guilt. Reading ''Beloved Old Age'' brought a degree of relief which nothing else has afforded. I know now that I was not alone, or even unreasonable, in sometimes being unreasonably cross, that perhaps it wasn't that I couldn't cope, but that what I was coping with was not capable of being resolved. For this I owe Julia Jones a debt of gratitude and I'd like to thank the publisher for sending a copy of the book to the Bookbag.
Jones speaks about whether or not dementia sufferers understand how what they do affects other people and compares this to the feelings of someone with autism and refers us to [[The Reason I Jump: One Boy's Voice from the Silence of Autism by Naoki Higashida and David Mitchell]]. We thought that was a special book. If you're looking for advice on dementia I can recommend [[Dementia: The One-Stop Guide: Practical advice for families, professionals, and people living with dementia and Alzheimer's Disease by June Andrews]]: it should have a place on the shelf of anyone for whom old age is more than just something in the distant future as it's also full of practical advice of on what you should be thinking about ''before'' you get there.
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