My Nana suffered from Alzheimers for more than 6 years. It is a draining and exhausting experience for everyone involved, watching someone you love intensely drift further away and become a shadow of who they were. The Alzheimer’s Society does what it can for both those who are experiencing and those who are caring for a loved one suffering with this awful form of dementia.

They say:

“The Alzheimer’s Society is the leading support and research charity for people with dementia, their families and carers.

There are 750,000 people with dementia in the UK with numbers set to rise to one million by 2025.

Alzheimer’s Society is a membership organisation, which works to improve the quality of life of people affected by dementia in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Many of our 25,000 members have personal experience of dementia, as carers, health professionals or people with dementia themselves, and their experiences help to inform our work.

The Society’s fight for a better world for people with all types of dementia takes a wide range of forms. Through our network of local services, we touch the lives of over 30,000 people every week, providing practical services and support for people with dementia and their carers. Every year, more than a million people make use of the information we provide.

Through campaigning and lobbying we strive to influence government policies and raise awareness of the challenges faced by people with dementia and the people who care for them. And through our research programme we work to improve the knowledge we have about dementia and its treatment – and pursuing the ultimate goal of finding a cure.”

As my grandfather writes in Fore And Aft:

“I had noticed Jackie acting strangely at times. Things like not remembering where the light switches were in the car. Parking the car and not remembering where. On holiday in Spain she did not remember our room number or how to find it. Of course she was diagnosed as having Alzheimers disease which changed our lives completely.

Unfortunately she was aware after a while that she was getting worse and she started with depression, followed by hallucinations, some of which frightened her.

She gradually got worse and had two or three two week spells in respite care. I think one of the most upsetting things which happened was when she was in respite and our son came to see her. He stayed a while and we chatted until he had to get on his way to London and he left us. When he had gone she said ‘That was a nice young man, who was he?’

All I know is that having loved and lost someone very close, who as a family we miss all the time, this would be a worthy place to donate even a small amount of money.