This Crazy Wonderful World

[Iris]

To all you CAT lovers out there - my sister's creation of a furry little tale using found objects.

Absolutely gorgeous! Looks like it was meant to be. What a clever lady your sister is!

[Lori]

Thank you! She is a creative whirlwind. Her love is oil painting and she also teaches painting classes. I've not been gifted with any visual art ability.

I think it may be time for you all to showcase some of your own creations. I know Mz. K does some amazing textile stuff, Mz. A with land art and other wonderful creations. Kat? What are you up to in the creative area? Hmm? I drew a pencil sketch of a deer in 6th grade that was nearly acceptable. That's it!

[Dee]

Have you still got it? I’d love to see it! Mz Moonchime is into pour paint these days - we’d love to see some please!!!

[Moonchime]

Wonderful piece of art from your sister Lori - and may I say how talented the rest of you are in collecting stuff for her - some really interesting little bits in there.

Maybe I should stop throwing stuff away - but the house is telling me I must. I don't know where people keep art - paintings take space but and really you need somewhere that you don't have to constantly tidy. I had a friend once who painted on huge canvases and in the end she couldn't keep them anymore. She went into a convent.

[Moonchime]

Have you still got it? I’d love to see it! Mz Moonchime is into pour paint these days - we’d love to see some please!!!

I've taken the photos but they weren't very good - the light was poor.

[Lori]

Wonderful piece of art from your sister Lori - and may I say how talented the rest of you are in collecting stuff for her - some really interesting little bits in there.

Maybe I should stop throwing stuff away - but the house is telling me I must. I don't know where people keep art - paintings take space but and really you need somewhere that you don't have to constantly tidy. I had a friend once who painted on huge canvases and in the end she couldn't keep them anymore. She went into a convent.

Isn't that something we don't often consider? I suppose people who absolutely must do art for their soul need to make space for it all. My mother had an entire upstairs as her studio in one home. My sister has a large basement dedicated to making/teaching art. Another sister has a converted 2-car garage where she keeps a menagerie of fabrics, paints, art supplies, etc. I have a piano that takes up half of any room. When we moved my parents to a small apartment from their seemingly little home, over half a huge truck was filled with paintings and painting supplies. When they arrived, my mom loaned a lot of paintings to places such as nursing homes to decorate the walls. She also made quite a few sales which is fun for her in her 80's and 90's. I wonder how your friend felt parting with her large creations? Was she ready by then to move beyond and count her blessings for the process? I cannot imagine.

[Moonchime]

How lovely to hear about your family's ways of coping with the goods that having wonderful hobbies/jobs brings. So special that you mother brought joy to other people by loaning her pictures out and selling some in her later years. The garage admittedly is an obvious place to resort to but ours is already more or less full with all sorts of outdoor gear and camping stuff as well as jars for jam and so forth. And yet.
As for my friend I don't know how she felt really - as she was going into the Poor Clare order of nuns I suppose she was renouncing a lot more than her art - and yet it seemed to me that she felt for the first time that she was really going home.

[Dee]

As you all know, I’ve been on a huge journey with dementia over the past few years.

It all started with Will’s utterly fabulous grandmother, who was my idol. A wonderful Scottish lady who knew hundreds of poems and songs by heart, an accomplished painter, a family person through and through holding the threads of even the extensions of the extended family. She got herself a keyboard for her 80th birthday, saying it was time to learn, and so she did. When she could no longer play, she gave her keyboard to me. She had a wicked sense of humour, a sharp wit, and a heart of gold. One day we turned up on her doorstep like two little drenched bunnies after some misfortunate camping expedition nearby, in relentless rain. She patted us dry, magicked a most delicious supper from leftovers with fried bread, and tucked us into a warm bed, and made us feel like little children all safe from the storms. We adored her.

She lived to 102, and spent her last few years in a home with advanced Alzheimer’s. Yet, even the last time we visited her, she still had a twinkle in her eye, was stealing little fluffy chickens from the dining room’s Easter table displays, (she proudly showed us her stash in her handbag) and she was popping little easter eggs into her mouth with a wink, knowing she shouldn’t just before lunch. Once upon a time a whizz with the most challenging puzzles, she was happily playing with kids jigsaws, and she had a jolly happy time with us, even she no longer had the faintest idea who we were. I’ll never forget that last day we saw her, because she was so obviously happy.

[Dee]

In the course of my work with people living with dementia, I’ve come across another remarkable lady, called Wendy Mitchell. I’ll let her introduce herself:



I’ve seen this video so many times and still it chokes me up.

Yet Wendy doesn’t need sympathy. After ten years since her diagnosis she’s still living independently, she writes a daily blog, she has published two books and the third one is coming out next month.

I’m halfway through her first one, ‘Somebody I used to Know’. It’s an inspirational recount of her dementia journey from the first symptoms. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Her strength, her positivity and love of life is truly amazing. I will also share a short interview with her:



My latest hero.

[Dee]

I hope you lovely lot will read about dear Wendy Mitchell above.

But I have encountered another extraordinary human since - sadly now dead - who once lived in the cottage where we stayed in Dartmouth, - now named after him as Kitcat Cottage.

https://www.cottages.com/cottages/kitca ... ge-dhkitka

I was immediately intrigued by his name:

Lieutenant Colonel Terence Kitcat - known to his friends as ‘Sailor’.



There was a lot of information about him in the cottage - and I became very fond of this no nonsense tough guy, adventurer extraordinaire, a calm leader, a loyal friend with a great sense of humour and a zest for life.

Some funny anecdotes about him in his brief life story in the spoiler box below.

Spoiler:

The Incredible and Un-make-upable Lt Col Kitcat

In 2003, after a particularly full life, Lt Col Terrence Kitcat died, at the grand old age of 95.

Lt Col Kitcat joined the navy when he was just 13 and came to Dartmouth to train at the Britannia Royal Naval College.

He spent time on ships and then moved onto submarines as a navigator. The times were simpler then – to achieve communications submarines had to fly a kite behind the boat with transmitters in them.

He decided this was not for him and transferred to the artillery – one of his famous stories was when he led the funeral cortege for King George VI with a broken collarbone after a fall from his frisky horse. He rode that horse for the whole way keeping his sabre upright and his horse under complete control.

He was then sent to North Africa to command an artillery battery during the Second World War.

They were attacked by a German force with tanks and mounted machine guns not long after he took up the post.

Outgunned, he ordered a retreat. The artillery took up positions six times on their 12 mile journey to safety, inflicting sufficient damage on their opponents that even when the British ran out of ammunition, the Germans could not press home the advantage and the majority of men made it home safe. For his calmness in the heat of battle he was awarded the military cross.

In 1943 he was taken into the secret service, and became an agent provocateur across Europe. He was stationed with his colleague and close friend Capt Paul Pike in Bulgaria, fighting a Guerrilla war. Capt Pike was shot in the leg and taken prisoner. A few days later the Greek washerwoman of his cell handed him a note written by Kitcat: “Am within five minutes of you, arrange contact, expect me anytime in any guise, yours till hell freezes over, Sailor.”

Capt Pike scribbled back to tell him not to bother as his injury meant he couldn’t travel. Kitcat turned up the next day with the cleaner and bundled him into a car he had stolen, and they got away.

After being selected for the British Winter Olympic ski-jumping team following the war, he found himself unable to attend the event after breaking his leg in training. So instead he went to the Arctic to test cold weather equipment and clothing in temperatures as low as -50celcius.

He was seconded to the American secret service and carried out operations in Iraq, Singapore, Hong Kong, Turkey, Malaya and Korea during the war there.

He retired from the army and became a skiing instructor and travelled all over Europe, always returning to the Torbay dry ski slope.

He was always a keen sailor, crossing the Atlantic many times. Once, after a particularly hairy crossing he came into Dartmouth as the sun broke through the clouds, and decided on the spot to settle there. He bought a house up Horn Hill steps and became famous for his stories and generosity, his wit and sense of fun. He was once observed running up and down the steps and when asked why he said because he had a pain in his chest, so if he didn’t drop dead he’d know it was indigestion.

Thanks to his time in hot climates he suffered late in life from skin cancer and had his ear removed. It was replaced with a prosthetic one. As he got older, and deafer, he was prone to taking it off, holding it up to whoever he was speaking to and asking ‘Speak up please!’

He was a true, endearing character you couldn’t make up. He could only have lived in Dartmouth.

[Lori]

Thanks so much for lighting up this thread again as it escaped me somehow even though I was once aware and very, very interested. Hmm. Life.

I am trying to recuperate from the bevy of emotions Wendy Mitchell stirred. I've loads of awe, respect, sympathy, and hope for her immediate future as I know her long-term outcome is not good. She is a beautiful communicator in so many ways and her words are incredibly enlightening. My father-in-law suffered from Alzheimer's and I wish he'd had a better time and ending. Education about it all is so vital. It takes a special soul to immerse themselves in this land of "fairy lights" and reach out to these souls with so much to give and who've lost a lot in the process as well.

And our Lt. Colonel Kitkat? What a delightful place and perfectly intriguing life this man lived! I know you sensed his presence in his home. If you didn't see him, he saw you!! Somehow I cannot imagine eternity taking him. What an interesting gritty lifeforce!

[Lori]

As you all know, I’ve been on a huge journey with dementia over the past few years.

It all started with Will’s utterly fabulous grandmother, who was my idol. A wonderful Scottish lady who knew hundreds of poems and songs by heart, an accomplished painter, a family person through and through holding the threads of even the extensions of the extended family. She got herself a keyboard for her 80th birthday, saying it was time to learn, and so she did. When she could no longer play, she gave her keyboard to me. She had a wicked sense of humour, a sharp wit, and a heart of gold. One day we turned up on her doorstep like two little drenched bunnies after some misfortunate camping expedition nearby, in relentless rain. She patted us dry, magicked a most delicious supper from leftovers with fried bread, and tucked us into a warm bed, and made us feel like little children all safe from the storms. We adored her.

She lived to 102, and spent her last few years in a home with advanced Alzheimer’s. Yet, even the last time we visited her, she still had a twinkle in her eye, was stealing little fluffy chickens from the dining room’s Easter table displays, (she proudly showed us her stash in her handbag) and she was popping little easter eggs into her mouth with a wink, knowing she shouldn’t just before lunch. Once upon a time a whizz with the most challenging puzzles, she was happily playing with kids jigsaws, and she had a jolly happy time with us, even she no longer had the faintest idea who we were. I’ll never forget that last day we saw her, because she was so obviously happy.

You are inundating me with fabulous souls today! Is this Will's grandmother on his father's or mother's side may I ask? Magical lady she be. Somewhere, somehow the meaning of life is embedded like a secret to discover in these special people who model life and joy in their everyday existence. Is this an end of a era? Can we step in their shoes even a little and spread that wide of a net for those around us to be encompassed in something so wonderful? What a gift this woman was to her loved ones and the world! Thank you for sharing her with us! What is her name, please. A photo would be grand as well...