Creating a memory book for Mum - early stages dementia, what works best?

[loveyouradvice]

Mum is now early stages dementia.

Before this, I used to send her a weekly "memory" by email - anything from collecting our first puppy together to her feeding me ice-cream when I was ill.

I would like to put a book of these together that she can flick through when she wants. My brother is putting together books of photos, so mine is just words.

Would you - given her progressing dementia - organise them

1. chronologically - a few pages about each stage of my life, just short stories/a couple of sentences about each memory
2. by theme - such as food - working - dogs
3. randomly - so whichever page she chooses there is something interesting

Instinctively I am thinking the first but realise I dont really understand much about dementia

It doesn't matter how you organise it. Just do something. What do you think mum might be better with? You know her best and you know her dementia progression best. All the professionals can give advice but it is not substitute for knowing your mum and where she is up to now and what might help her best. We can give advice from generic understanding of dementia progression but it is no substitute as individual lovely wonderful people are who they are and it progresses in such individual ways sometimes. .

That sounds a lovely idea. I did one for my Nan. I did family members in chronological order then themes - Xmas, holidays, her dogs etc etc. She loved it and it gave us something to distract her when she was having a bad day.

Do keep in mind that as the dementia progresses, she'll be less and less able to read what you've written. It's an unfortunate part of dementia . Reading becomes stressful and eventually impossible so don't stick to the written word.

I'd keep it to mainly pictures of familiar people ' places . And don't make it "your life" as you say - make it her own life - including you of course, but including everyone in her life. Don't worry about themes, etc, her brain won't be able to cope with themes. Just random pictures with a few words should work well.

You mention that you don't know about dementia - it's good to educate yourself on this, for your own sake. Dementia does awful things to people, and at least if you understand how it progresses you'll be able to cope better. Contact Dementia UK www.dementiauk.org/understanding-dementia/advice-and-information/

Good luck - you're doing a nice thing for your Mum.

Great advice from.ShippingNews

I wouldn't do just words. A photo and a short bit naming the people in it and something about the occasion (and a page at the front with a 'whos who' will last a lot longer as others will be able to look at it with her. If its centred on her it is more likely to feel relevant to her.
You do need to prepare yourselves that she might not be interested, or keep being interested in them though. I lovingly made photobooks for my mum, and they mean nothing to her now as her type of dementia has visual processing consequences and she lost the ability to read years ago, and photos don't translate into memories for her.

Thank you all for such beautiful and helpful thoughts... yes, I do need to educate myself about dementia but I recognise I am quite scared to do so... I feel so sad that I might be about to lose my Mum while at the moment we have such beautiful memory-filled times together that are truly a joy