This is a quote from the Guardian article on dementia, today, Tuesday, 20 October 2015, as follows:
“When someone loses an arm or a leg, we know exactly what's missing; but with the loss of memory, something greater than memory is at stake. Memory isn't just about remembering, and memory loss isn't just about forgetting. Memory is responsible for creating continuity, meaning, and coherence both for ourselves and for those around us. Its integration into every function of life,from speaking and learning to the forming of relationships, actually makes its loss all the more difficult to comprehend, since the visible repercussions-repetition, confusion, anxiety, and mood swings - distract us from the deeper, more intangible privation.”
20.10.15 at 12.16 hrs: (pba): Wonderful insight into not only dementia but other aspects of life touched-on by this website. In other words, the significance of memories which I am seeking here to preserve, in relation to ‘every function of life, from speaking and learning to the forming of relationships'. We need, or anyway, I need, to preserve something of these insights from my family’s shared past for passing-on to the following generations, so that they may possibly find links with me and those I knew, which otherwise would have been lost.