Age Concern Hampshire

Sarah Reed writes for Age Concern Hampshire, February 2009:

How Easy it is to Forget Memory

Can you think of a holiday or outing from your younger days that was special in some way? The images that such an event might conjure up are also at the route of one aspect of happiness that people often forget: memory.

Research shows that reminiscence can be good for everyone. In one US study, people who reflected on pleasant memories for 20 minutes daily reported significant improvements in their overall mood and subjects said that they felt better about their relationships too.

Some might say that finding happy memories from the past encourages people to keep looking back, rather than living in the here-and-now. But one does not preclude the other and for many elderly people, their past is where most of their sense of ‘self’ resides. Even young people reminisce – twenty-somethings remembering how they loved Bagpuss or The Clangers, is hardly different to older pensioners remembering the pleasures of playing in the street, or their journeys to school.

And when people reminisce together, apart from the general enjoyment they get from comparing notes, they learn about one another in pleasurable ways that can bind them in friendship and understanding unlike few other activities.

Recently, I visited one of my ninety-something friends. She lives all alone and cannot get out, and was depressed and worried because after a recent stroke was finding that her short-term memory was failing. “I can't seem to remember even the simplest things” she said dismally. We fell into conversation about the street where she's lived all her life and how it has changed, and she told me about her friend Helen, who lived with her mother in the next-door house in the terrace.

Like my friend, caught up with caring for her elderly parents, Helen never married. “Helen's mum used to sit at that upstairs window” she said, pointing up at the back of the house, “and wave at me when I pulled the curtains back in the morning. We hardly ever spoke - it's funny to think that she lived there all those years, yet I never really knew anything about her although Helen and I were good friends.”

“In 1939, we went on holiday together, just for a week – it was all we could afford. It was a real adventure. We went down to Bournemouth by train, then each day we travelled on to another seaside town, staying in little guest houses as we went.”

I said I thought it sounded quite daring for the time. “Well I suppose it was”, she said, “but it was marvellous. How we laughed! It was the best holiday I ever had.”

“Then on the way back, we very nearly missed the train, but as it was chuffing out of the station, we ran along the platform and the guard pulled us on. We were still laughing as we got our breath back. By the time we got home we were bursting to go to the lavatory because we couldn't afford the penny we needed - we'd spent all our money!”

The charming picture she painted has stayed with me since, and yet who of her carers knows anything about her - or her life? Does she ever talk with them? “Oh no, there's never time for anything like that” she said, “they always just run in and run out. Still, at least there's the telly.” Would we want our own lives to be ignored or forgotten in this way?

I was only with her for an hour, but it was so good to hear her stories, and see her cheer up. It was probably the longest conversation she'd had with anyone for weeks.

 After fifteen years volunteering for the charity Contact the Elderly and seeking ways of communicating better with my mother, who has vascular dementia,

I developed Many Happy Returns 1940s. It is box of 26 large-size cards to share, with images, background information and conversational prompts, which provide opportunities for people to enjoy each other’s company across the generations, by promoting interaction and conversation about subjects relating to everyday life.