Tag Archives: Alzheimer’s Disease

Writing prompt – art

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Philip's art. Photo by Judy DarleyToday’s #WritingPrompt is inspired by my dad. It amazes me how art can help to sustain us in the most challenging of circumstance. I myself write prose poetry and poems to manage the emotional strain of visiting my dad in his care home. He’s afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease and Semantic Dementia which has made language particularly elusive.

Yet on a recent visit, following a fairly nonsensical chat, he picked up some pieces of napkin, tore them and placed two of them as shown above. It felt like he was trying to both make sense of and communicate something. He told me the middle piece was the people, and the one underneath was something he couldn’t get to or reach.

I added the top piece. He considered it with great seriousness, and then smiled. I think the collaborative, ‘reaching out’, aspect of it pleased him.

His earnestness really moved me, and I believe that many admired artists could toil for months with a far less profound outcome.

Strip back a message or emotion to two or three components that interest you, then create a story or a piece of art imbued with those words or feelings. Alternatively, take the words expressed here: people, out of reach, collaborating or reaching out, and write something inspired by these sentiments.

If you write or create something prompted by this, please send an email to judydarley(at)iCloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I’ll publish it on SkyLightRain.com.

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Taf and Garden Shed – writing inspired by dementia

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Walking to Dylan Thomas' home in Laugharne with Dad 2016 cr Judy Darley

Walking to Dylan Thomas’ home in Laugharne with Dad, November 2016

I’m thrilled that my poem Taf has been published in issue 3 of DNA magazine. I wrote it while visiting Laugharne in South Wales with my mum last summer. It’s a place we’ve often stayed as a family, and this was the first time I’d visited since Dad became too unwell with Alzheimers to travel.

The issue hinges on the theme Locations, so a poem written with such a strong sense of place felt like the right submission. The town, its woods and the tidal estuary are full of reminders that Dylan Thomas lived there for a while, and this time it felt as though Dad’s ghost and Dylan’s were strolling together through every view. It’s a strange thing to grieve a person whose heart still beats.

My poem aims to capture some of that emotional conflict, as well as the beauty of Laugharne. You can read Taf here.

My story Garden Shed has been published by the excellent New Flash Fiction magazine. It’s a deeply personal piece reporting almost verbatim from a dream about my father, who has Alzheimer’s Disease. I woke reeling with the discovery that all this time the man we’ve lost has been out there, safe in the shed, while the poor soul he’s become ambles through an increasingly confusing world.

You can read my story here: http://newflashfiction.com/judy-darley/

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The power of music

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Judy Darley and her dad, Philip DarleyToday, Thursday 18th May 2017, is the inaugural National Memory Day, celebrating the power of creativity to aid people with memory impairments such as dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease.

My dad, Philip, is one of those people. In an effort to connect with him, I recently persuaded his former choir, the excellent City of Bristol Choir, to bring some of their finest alto, soprano, tenor and bass voices to his care home and sing. It was a magical and heart wrenching experience.

I wrote about it for The Bristol Magazine. You can read the full feature here.