Fading memories

She came to my home to borrow some red cotton. Her name was Maria, and she lived next door. So shy and quiet, and I invited her in to choose her colour from my sewing box. She came again a while later, this time took my hand as she was leaving, saying: “I am from Sicily and it is the greatest compliment in my country to be invited into your home as you invited me. I have spoken to my family in Sicily to have them thank you with a gift.” My protests were all in vain, and she came again with the most amazing gift, a locket on a gold chain. I never saw her again, as my enquiries took me to the large General Hospital where she was incarcerated for mental illness!
Reading in another place where almost one million Australians are expected to be victims of dementia by the year 2050, Maria’s case and at least six others I have carefully researched since February 2007 when I was to become a statistic, begs the question, who will benefit from this contagion?
Watching the starving millions in Africa trudging for hundreds of miles with babies dying in their arms, dementia is not mentioned as the cause.
In Australia where the food is in abundance, social security provides for comforts beyond the wildest dreams of much of the world’s poor. This writer will not tolerate that levels as mentioned above will occur naturally here, to have up to one million people taken from their homes to mental hospitals. Following my intensive research into property RE distribution following such events, there are patterns that indicate care is needed to protect those who may have to rely upon those who are not trustworthy. This writer believes that there are very serious questions raised but not answered, as to the onset of dementia and its unstoppable horror result of property loss and personal trauma. In Maria’s name I ask, who cares enough to investigate what is to this writer, not at all what it seems!
Melba Morris