Summer reissue: a prayer for a woman with dementia, this fictional piece by Cambridge writer Tracey Slaughter features in the new edition of Landfall. First published 7 November 2020. Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The Spinoff’s journalism is funded by its members – click here to learn more about … Read more
A prayer for a woman with dementia, this fictional piece by Cambridge writer Tracey Slaughter features in the new edition of Landfall. She will forget the house. It will leave her one window at a time, breaking off in pieces of pine and lace and quartered glass. She will forget the feel of the rooms … Read more
Sarah Catherall’s mother has suffered from Alzheimer’s for 14 years; it’s been four years since she last recognised her family. Would she want to keep living this way? Mum sleeps with her eyes wide open, snoring. Lying back in her floral patterned bed in the rest home, her grey-blue eyes stare blankly upwards. Her bed … Read more
Covid-19 has made us aware of society’s most vulnerable. Let’s make ‘being kind’ to them more than a blip on the radar, writes Alzheimers NZ chief executive Catherine Hall. If the Covid-19 crisis has any upside it’s the fact that, for the first time in decades, the plight of New Zealand’s older people is receiving … Read more
As New Zealand goes into alert level four – lockdown – in response to the Covid-19 crisis, Catherine Woulfe has her father on her mind. The last time I saw my dad he kept saying one thing over and over. Luhyee. Luhyee. Ahluhyee. I pressed my forehead to his and I held his eyes that … Read more
There’s a lot of confusion around the symptoms and effects of dementia. Now, neuroscientists are partnering with playwrights to give a voice to the research. In labs and clinics across New Zealand, researchers are working towards an ambitious goal: to understand the biological mechanisms behind Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and Parkinson’s diseases, as well as stroke and … Read more
Four decades after holding a mirror up to Kiwi masculinity with the sensational play Foreskin’s Lament, Greg McGee is back with Necessary Secrets, a new novel that asks the same question: whaddarya? At a time when we might feel we’ve reached peak old privileged white bloke, it’s a brave writer who devotes the first 61 … Read more
Teens have smoked weed from the side of a can for decades, and probably always will. But doesn’t that give you Alzheimer’s? Don Rowe called a real life scientist to find out. There is nothing on earth quite like smoking weed off a can. Bending, crimping, poking a rush hole just so – it’s the closest … Read more
An excerpt from Pip Desmond’s best-selling memoir about her mother’s descent into dementia. I read about a hairdresser who had three customers pass away under the hairdryer; she took it as a compliment that they’d felt relaxed enough to do so. That could have been Mum. She had been going to David’s hair salon in Wadestown once … Read more