and reflections of my late father

This weekend marks the 4-year anniversary of my father’s death. Dad died in July 2014 at the age of 65 from ‘Pick’s disease,’ a rare form of progressive dementia involving localized atrophy of the brain. His symptoms all pointed towards early-onset dementia, and we only learned of his true diagnoses a year after his death.

My father was a hardy Irishman and an outdoors-man. If he wasn’t rounding up cattle, constructing a fence or creating a vineyard (to perfection mind you) he was pouring everyone a drink and spinning a yarn … the time he built his own river boat and treated his sister to an ‘adventure down Abbey river.’ Musings of tomfoolery and even tragedy — but always sprinkled with that sharp Irish wit and narrated with an infectious, barrel-chested laugh.

For some reason I think of the lyrics from Working Man by The Dubliners …

He can take you back in time, tell you of the hardships that were there. It’s a working man I am and I’ve been down underground …

My father was that spirited working man, through and through. At least until his brain began to shut down, one compartment at a time.

I first noticed it when he failed to recognise his favourite coffee mug. My mother just shot me a worried look and blamed it on the wine. Then his moods became erratic, yo-yo-ing between passive and detached to uncharacteristically aggressive.

We were none the wiser.

While families wait for a cure their loved ones are slipping away before their eyes

How can anyone know when a loved one is slowly vanishing? When their walls of perception are crumbling down around them and their anamnesis is being hijacked — the recollection of an entire life suddenly spirited away by some unseen thought thief.

How could a man who was larger than life, who was a source of such humour and wit, be reduced to this? When someone close to you develops dementia, you naturally want to understand why it’s happening … so you start to dig, you do your research.

The New England Journal of Medicine characterises Alzheimers’s disease as the deposition of amyloid-beta (Aβ) plaques in the brain.

But that description doesn’t help much unless you’re a neurologist or have a profound understanding of the human brain. And with so many cooks in the neurological kitchen, waiting for a cure is like waiting for a divine miracle. And most trials are unsuccessful.