‘I want to go to Lyme Regis with my mum.’ Then she remembers. ‘No, she’s had it.’
‘I’m going to die sometime. It’s so tiring.’
‘Ha ha ha. You’re trying to kill me.’
Seemingly random statements, but signs of thinking about death and dying. Dementia has been called a living death, so maybe this is an area to think about – how we think about death and dying, and about others thinking about their dying.
For example, I remember being told by a psychiatrist that the dying are relieved to be told that death itself need not be painful. The idea of a living death brings to this side of the Styx what is usually assumed to belong to the other side. There was a book some years ago, the Limbo People, about life in an old people’s home. I think there is a theory that in ordinary dying there is a process of detachment, as the usual concerns no longer matter, and the individual gets ready to let go. Limbo, as I understand, was an early version of a detention centre for asylum seekers, the basically good people just who did not have the right paperwork, being old testament or unbaptised.
Anna has had a healthcheck and her GP visited last week. They used to work together in an adolescent psychotherapy service. Her heart, liver, thyroid, etc, are all functioning well. But she thinks she is dying.