I can't believe I found this image on my laptop This image right here, about my own pop (my mother's father) in a nursing home. My Pop, John (not revealing the last name, for safety reasons) had a bad case of Dementia, a mental condition that blocks parts of your memory, almost like a firewall on a computer. Unfortunately, this particular wall was not one that could be easily removed by technology, and no amount of medication could stop this, prevent it, or help (at the time of writing this).
I guess when I was younger, I wanted to believe that it wasn't so, that pop didn't have Dementia, but I guess I should've seen it sooner. I think it might've been when I was 16 or so, when I saw pop sitting at his Windows 7 Microsoft desktop computer, playing his favourite game on there, Spider Solitaire. When I commented that this game gave out a crappy hand to him, when he needed to sort the cards, he was convinced that there was a virtual card dealer inside the computer that dealt the cards he was given. He was so sure of it, but I didn't want to tell him otherwise. Maybe out of respect, or confusion, or something completely different, but either way, I left it at that. And when I brought up what pop had said to my nanna (my mother's mother), she just said 'well, don't tell him there's no such person living inside that computer'.
A few months later, after, and I kid you not here, pop had set himself and the working shed he had on fire, in an attempt to kill himself, my mum and nana realized what needed to be done. They had no choice, but to put him in a nursing home. He really didn't want to go, even when we told him that this new place, Aurum, which SPECIALIZED in caring for people with Dementia, would be his new home from now on. The whole family help where they could; grabbing photos for pop to look at, a personalized calendar, which we gave him for christmas, and even his own chair that he would sit in. After a couple of weeks of being there, he was settled in, and was somewhat happy. He really missed gardening, so we got him a plant to take care of, and instructed the nurses and other people that worked there to make sure he gets out and gets to go in the garden often. Well, he didn't.
My younger sister had gone to Japan a little while later on a school trip back in 2016, and decided to stay there for a few months, and when she came back, pop said 'Bloody hell! Where have you been'? He might not have remembered our actual given names, but he recognized us kids by our nicknames he gave us, when we were younger. I was Charlie, for reasons known only to my family, my younger sister, had the name of Diz-Whiz, because when she was younger she suffered from dizzy spells, and my youngest sister had the nickname of 'Dolly', because of how small she was when she was a baby.
A few months after that, after spending a day at the beach one hot day, my family, and some of my cousins received some rather alarming news; pop was dying. He was bedridden because it hurt to move his body, no thanks to the Alzheimer's Disease he also had, and over the course of a few weeks, was slowly becoming a skeleton. I was so scared, and felt so alone, so I spent the night up at my cousins house, and waited there, for any news. The good news is, he was stable enough. The bad news was that the staff at Aurum hadn't done much in regards to helping him with eating, drinking, and keeping on top of other things with him as well (You know what I mean by that). Nothing. A few months past by, and I'd stopped visiting pop, because, much like Edward Kenway from the 'Assassin's Creed: Black Flag' book, I didn't want my last remaining memories of my pop (or in Edward's case, his wife, Caroline) to be bad ones; I wanted to preserve and remember the good memories and times we had.
He passed away last year, January 2017. I only wish I had done more to help him. That same year, I was graduating from high school, and had refused to go on the year 12 camp, because of what had happened with the family. I still needed time to accept what had happened, and as it turned out, it wasn't until some time into March, I could move on, and accept he was gone. So, fast-forward several months, to say, May this year, I designed this book cover based on a writing prompt I had seen. And titled it 'As Long as I can Remember'. This is a dedication to my pop. I blurred out the faces as best I could to A) illustrate what a cruel disease Dementia is, and B) in case I ever decided to put this on a website, such as this one.
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