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Intimate relationships and dementia
Johnson, L. Syd M Krahn, Timothy M
Johnson, L. Syd M
Krahn, Timothy M
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Abstract
We tend to think of our lives progressing in a linear fashion, from start to fi nish, infancy to old age, birth to death. Within a lifetime, there is the progressive accumulation of experience, understanding, knowledge, memory, and relationships, all shaping our identities, our understanding of who we are, our place in the world, and giving meaning to our lives. Th e fi lm Away from Her addresses this poignant and neglected aspect of dementing illnesses like Alzheimer’s disease, exploring the ways in which we are anchored by love and relationships, and how the unmooring that accompanies dementia—for example, the loss of shared memory (Bateman, 2007:23)—aff ects not just those whose memories are lost, but also those whose memories remain intact or, at the very least, much more secure and stable.vi As persons partially constituted by their relationships with their forgetful loved ones, those who (can) remember become lost too, as they navigate with now varying degrees of loneliness (Graham & Bassett, 2006), the path along which they once walked with another.
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2010-11
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With permission of the license/copyright holder