ABSTRACT
It seems to be the case that many relatives of people with progressive illness, especially ones which involve dementia, feel a lot of guilt and anger at themselves for ‘not being able to cope’. This can lead to physical or mental illness among carers, either during or after their relative’s life, and the guilt for supposedly not caring enough can torment them indefinitely. With the emphasis now on thinking more positively about these illnesses and the quality of life which can be provided, there is a danger that carers may start to feel guilty about the negative feelings that they themselves experience or which they experienced while their relative was alive. It is clearly important that those closest to the sufferer maintain a hopeful, optimistic outlook,1 yet this is extraordinarily difficult when the relatives are themselves trying to deal with their own grief and helplessness. In this last chapter, I share my own first-hand experience of progressive illness in the hope that it will strike some chords with others who have been in the same position and who have found the experience indescribably dreadful. At times my training as an art therapist and group analyst helped me to maintain some objectivity, at others it got in the way as I tried to ‘hide’ my feelings under a professional front. Art, in the form of conceptual sculptures, sometimes enabled me to put various experiences into a series of ironic, metaphorical processes, about which I will say more later.
