I have been journalling in my head all week. I notice that I didn’t leave G behind after my visit last week. Because of his awareness of the process, his interest in the job I’m doing. Because he asked ‘when will you visit again?’, wanted to know when I would leave for good, and said ‘Then you will close the book’. Also because we had a chat before starting with the work – his longing for a proper conversation is so… And I had to listen to the recording later, because I knew I’d missed a lot – he talks quickly and softly – but listening back I was impressed how much I understood of what seemed unclear. He has been with me so much, and I am glad of his presence.
A speaks clearly, in careful sentences, as someone for whom english is not her mother tongue. I feel she is dictating to me, as she lies on her bed – she speaks, lets me write it down, and continues when she notices my hand is not scurrying across the page.
Last week Susanna read us a couple of poems from the 1st Living Words anthology, and there are lines that have been running through my head, like embroidery, and they have become words I am trying to live by:
“… Pretend you have all the time / In the world / We will feel like King or Queen” (from ‘King or Queen’).” I have these lines in my head when I am talking to my mum on the phone from Canada, who always says, ‘I know how busy you are’.
At times I find it hard, that my head is full of other people’s words – this is the same when I’m reading a lot and not writing enough. But the writer part of me feels completely supported in this work, this training – i feel valued as a writer, and acknowledge I couldn’t do this unpaid. The wolf is at the door again and again and won’t go away until he’s fed.
Lines from a poem I read in the Guardian Review recently, resonated for me, and seemed to speak to/about the experience of dementia:
“Be silent, hide away and let / your thoughts and longings rise and set / in the deep places of your heart.
…Live in yourself. There is a whole / deep world of being in your soul, / burdened with mystery and thought…”
(from Silentium by Fyodor Tyutchev, transl. Robert Chandler)
Shazea Quraishi