People from disparate backgrounds, some struggling with their memory, some losing their mind... they all make for a warm and welcome refuge, says Elisa Segrave
‘Would you like to go in there?’ my daughter asked – too eagerly, I thought – referring to the care home where my mother had died, suffering from Alzheimer’s, in August 2003. I am 67 and do not show signs of dementia – although she may think otherwise. Still, I surprised myself by saying ‘Yes’, though I didn’t mean right away. I had just revisited St Raphael’s in East Sussex for the first time since my mother’s death. It is run by an order of Augustinian nuns, started in 1842 by the progressive Canon Peter Maes in Bruges, for the care of the mentally ill. In 1866, the Sisters of St Augustine was re-formed, here in Sussex. A writer friend, eighty-plus, elegant, lively and compos mentis, had just put herself into St Raphael’s. She had then sent me a disconcerting postcard – ‘Change and decay in all around I see,’...
I’m afraid this isn’t one of our four free articles available in full, which are set out in the first two rows of the ‘Magazine’ page.
Please click here to find them.
To buy a digital version of this issue for just £2.99, click here
