When Kristen’s father, Don, was diagnosed with dementia the signs had been there for five years. He’d gone out less and less, given up driving and table tennis, which he’d played all his life, and relied increasingly on his wife, Penny. Conversations went in circles.
Kristen started trying different ways to get her dad back – not the dad who could recall what was said or retain facts about his family, but the one who was patient, curious and funny. Who said, ‘I could talk with you for hours.’
She realised as he searched for words that weren’t there and reached for new ones, that the words he was finding and how he fitted them together felt like poetry. And Kristen, a poet, began writing it down.
‘Dad, You’ve Got Dementia’ is not about what is being lost on a daily basis but what there is still to find. It shows people living with dementia and their whanau that it’s possible to stay connected with those they love.
