{"id":69466,"date":"2023-11-16T02:35:47","date_gmt":"2023-11-16T02:35:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/likecelebwn.com\/?p=69466"},"modified":"2023-11-16T02:35:47","modified_gmt":"2023-11-16T02:35:47","slug":"the-conversation-musician-mark-seymour-wants-australians-to-have","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/likecelebwn.com\/lifestyle\/the-conversation-musician-mark-seymour-wants-australians-to-have\/","title":{"rendered":"The conversation musician Mark Seymour wants Australians to have"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Singer Mark Seymour can\u2019t recall how long his mother, Paula, was living with dementia in the end. But he remembers clearly the point at which everything changed.<\/p>\n

It was a weekend when he received a call from his sister to tell him things had gone wrong at their parents\u2019 house in Melbourne\u2019s north-eastern suburbs.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Musician Mark Seymour wants dementia to be a part of mainstream conversations.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Alex Ellinghausen<\/cite><\/p>\n

\u201cWe went out there and it was just chaos. Things had tipped over and she was hallucinating,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Seymour\u2019s dad was at his wit\u2019s end. His mum was walking up and down corridors, roaming all over the house.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were behaviours we\u2019d witnessed before, but he\u2019d always said he could manage. And then there was this critical day, that it just became obvious he couldn\u2019t any more,\u201d Seymour recalls.<\/p>\n

Things moved quickly from that point. Within 24 hours Paula was in hospital, diagnosed and institutionalised. Then they slowed down again.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was there [in a home] for – God, I don\u2019t know – years. A long, long time. The thing is, the behaviour changes very gradually,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

It is a journey the Hunters & Collectors frontman wants people to talk about more openly, as the number of Australians with dementia – currently about 400,000 – is projected to double in 30 years. Dementia is the country\u2019s second-leading cause of death, and its impact on the lives of both sufferers and their families can be profound.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a period early on when there\u2019s always the risk of psychosis, which means that they start behaving strangely and having an enormous anxiety. [That] psychotic time lasted a few weeks and that was pretty confronting,\u201d Seymour explains.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty, pretty dark stuff\u2026 I\u2019d always thought of my mother as being very intellectual; she was a very smart woman. And all of that had gone. I mean, she was communicating, but there was so much fear in the way she dealt with the world, and paranoia, too. I saw a side of my mother that was fearful, deeply anxious.\u201d<\/p>\n

But as the weeks – and then years – wore on, their relationship took on a new frame.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou actually have to step up, be engaged with your parents when they\u2019re like that. I found it really moving, because it was drawn out for so long. The strange thing about my relationship with my mother is that it actually improved, in a quite deep, emotional way,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Paula became more quiet as her dementia became more advanced. She spent a lot of time sleeping. Seymour was often out of town but at least once a week, often on his way back from the airport, he would visit.<\/p>\n

For weeks and weeks, they sat in the sun-room together. He would simply hold her hand for about half an hour, until it became too much, which is when he would leave. She wouldn\u2019t always register his coming or going. But that time spent alone just the two of them was a profound experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea of having that kind of quiet, very peaceful contact with a parent… In a strange way, it probably would never have happened if she hadn\u2019t been sick,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

This was when Seymour started writing his song, Classrooms and Kitchens<\/em>, which he describes as the story of his mother\u2019s life and the stages of her dementia in three minutes.<\/p>\n

It starts with his earliest childhood memory of her, in a kitchen in the small Victorian town of Corryong. By the third verse, she\u2019s counting to 10 and forgetting things her children once said – the behaviours Seymour observed as her dementia progressed.<\/p>\n

The chorus – \u201cLay down your long goodbye; She\u2019s leaving, she\u2019s leaving; It\u2019s too late to wonder why\u201d – marks his realisation there would never be a moment when he would say goodbye.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just that the enormous sense of loss, but protracted over a long period of time,\u201d he says. \u201cBecause you\u2019re immersed in that limbo, there\u2019s an enormous amount of intimacy in that. If you\u2019ve ever seen someone die, you\u2019re witnessing something that\u2019s really powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Years later, Seymour is an ambassador for Dementia Australia. He thinks it is important that as the disease becomes a more common, it is de-stigmatised, part of mainstream conversations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe country is getting older. The stats are really rolling that way and there are just hundreds of thousands of people who\u2019ve got it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually think the biggest problem is not knowing what\u2019s coming, and then finding the right people who will actually tell you what things mean: why is she behaving like that? What\u2019s actually causing that?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first encountered it, there was just this feeling of, \u2018this is all a bit secretive and strange and alien\u2019, which is odd, considering the number of people who\u2019ve got it. There need to be more of a mainstream awareness that it\u2019s something that everybody\u2019s going to have to deal with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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