26SEP2020
My grandfather died this year. He had dementia. While dementia wasn't the official cause of his death - think it was kidney failure or something - I have since been really infatuated with it, trying to understand it, to see what it would be like. A physical ailment is easy to imagine - if your hand is broken it's broken and it makes sense how that affects your day to day life. A mental illness is different. It's almost like something doesn't compile about the world, or at least that's my interpretation of it. The only mental illness I have is idiot syndrome, chronic since birth. I have wanted to understand his struggles since I heard of it. I couldn't be there to see him perish in such a state but my dad could, and from what I gathered he had almost lost touch with reality, referring to the past as his present, calling for his wife who had been dead for close to five years at the time. It had to be fuelled by morbid curiosity - maybe one day I would be r