Mere Christianity – C. S. Lewis
Earliest lessons in time teach us that time is an irreversible succession from the past through the present to get to the future. The hours of the days, the days of the week, the months of the year and so on, and so on.
However, for some this seems not to be the case. People with dementia often live in the past as if it were the present day. The short-term memory is so impaired that the now which most of us take for granted is almost non-existent, and they live their life locked in the past.
Dementia progressively causes problems with memory, planning and functioning successfully in everyday situations. Early onset sees people losing the sense of time. They no longer know the date, the day, the month or even the year. A few minutes could be interpreted as a lifetime by them because they can’t remember how long ago something started. When the care giver is gone even for a few minutes this could be construed as all day leading to fears that they have been abandoned. Memory is a collection of different systems within the brain and when dementia starts to affect these systems people often resort to living in the past, as those memories are often unaffected.
So, for people with dementia time is anything but linear and constant.