ABSTRACT
Dementia has become a dominant narrative in my life. I was six years old when my ‘little nan’ Annie clearly started deteriorating in health. Parkinson’s and then dementia led her to a bed in a cottage hospital in Essex, a frightening experience looking back at my younger self and seeing the grandmother I loved change so dramatically. My granddad Vic, Annie’s husband, then went on to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s type Dementia. I recall him arriving outside our house in his old car with two watering cans already full of water from the well in his house: ‘but Grandad we have water here at our house’. He proceeded happily to water the plants and was a man who spent many happy hours gardening and enjoying activity outdoors.
