As many of you will know, parkrun is a free, weekly event open to all members of the community who are keen to walk, jog or run a 5km course in a park or other beautiful open space. It is a global phenomena with literally millions of people taking part each week. And if running […]
On behalf of the trustees of Remembering Not to Forget, I hope that all of our supporters and their families and friends are keeping well in these surreal times. I’ve been thinking a lot about how much harder this situation would have been if Mum had still been alive, how confusing it would have been […]
Sometimes I forget that my Mum is dead. More than once I’ve met up with someone I’ve not seen for a while who didn’t already know about Mum, they’ve asked how I am and I genuinely forget. And then I remember. Other times it’s all I can think about, all I want to talk about. […]
I have had lots of time over the last few months to reflect on Mum’s death and my daughter’s birth, and it has struck me, coming as they did within 4 weeks of each other, how much similarity there is between start and end of life care. This circularity of life has been both comforting […]
*Featured image: Samples of brain tissue, frozen at -150 degrees celsius. On 23rd August, co-founder Ali Turnbull visited BRACE and the South West Dementia Brain Bank. Here she describes her visit. Meeting BRACE While we always try to make sure that each round of Remembering Not to Forget grants are used to fund a wide […]
I had intended to share this blog (initially written last year) on Friday 1st September, to mark both the start of Alzheimer’s Awareness Month and the start of my maternity leave. But 1st September ended up being a far more significant date as it’s the day that our lovely Ma passed away. As anyone who […]
It’s amazing how quickly things change. At the start of May I went home for a typical and unremarkable weekend. Mum was quiet but seemed happy and although slow and a bit doddery on her feet we walked to the park and threw her ball around. One night the care lady came while we were […]
We made a donation of £1000 from funds raised in 2016 to support the Alzheimer’s Society campaigning work. They asked us to write a blog for their website explaining why we chose to make this donation, the blog below also features on the Alzheimer’s Society website. We are ‘lucky’ in that Mum is entitled to […]
Increasingly Mum is silent. And typically when she does talk the words are jumbled and there is rarely any sense in what she says. Often basic requests such as “take your shoes off” or “sit down” take multiple attempts and encouragement before they are actioned. Yet a level of comprehension clearly remains some of the […]
Every family has their Christmas traditions. Mum used to make dozens and dozens of mince pies each year, giving them out to family and friends, to staff and patients at the hospice where she worked, and defrosting them to serve for pudding at family meals for the rest of the year (there are probably boxes […]