A documentary film IN THE MAKING featuring my grandad and his dementia.
The first thing my grandad (mijn Opa) forgot was how to make his bread. An action he did every week for years and years, as long as we can remember he baked his own bread. He prided himself on it. My grandmother started noticing there was something different because the breads would come out differently every time. She asked him if he'd changed his recipe.. of course not, don't be daft. He started to forget to add the yeast or the measurements were off or one or the other. Still, he wouldn't admit he had forgotten how to. Eventually he just stopped making bread, and instead he took on pretending to read.
I came across this excerpt where he tries to teach my parents how to make their own home made bread and thought it a fitting start to this journey..
Are our memories what we are?
What does it tell us about what life is? The meaning of our lives.. Living, being and being no more.. I think there is an extremely valuable truth to learn in people living with dementia.
When I did my graduate film about the dead boy I saw an actual real-life, not living, brain for the first time in my life. It is so beautiful, so delicate, I could've stared at it for hours. I was entranced by it. Afterwards I started thinking a lot about my granddad. My granddad's brain. How does it work? I needed to see it, experience it. I thought to myself I actually barely know him and (perhaps stupidly) thought this could be a chance for me to get to know him. I did. It was a different person I got to know, and he is different again now.. forever moving, growing, changing..
I love and am in total agreement with Dutch Theatermaker Adelheid Roosen, who said she didn't see her mother with Alzheimer's disease disappear but appear. "I experience her as an Alice in Wonderland: she falls through time.I follow her, discover where she is, what she experiences, does and says.My mother moved without a suitcase, I travel with her as her luggage."
THAT is where our power lies. Not in our memories but in the acceptance of transformation.