Where Memories Go: Why Dementia Changes Everything

Written by Sally Magnusson

Narrated by Sally Magnusson

This book began as an attempt to hold on to my witty, storytelling mother with the one thing I had to hand. Words. Then, as the enormity of the social crisis my family was part of began to dawn, I wrote with the thought that other forgotten lives might be nudged into the light along with hers. Dementia is one of the greatest social, medical, economic, scientific, philosophical and moral challenges of our times. I am a reporter. It became the biggest story of my life.
Sally Magnusson

Regarded as one of the finest journalists of her generation, Mamie Baird Magnusson's whole life was a celebration of words - words that she fought to retain in the grip of a disease which is fast becoming the scourge of the 21st century. Married to writer and broadcaster Magnus Magnusson, they had five children of whom Sally is the eldest. As well as chronicling the anguish, the frustrations and the unexpected laughs and joys that she and her sisters experienced while accompanying their beloved mother on the long dementia road for eight years until her death in 2012, Sally Magnusson seeks understanding from a range of experts and asks penetrating questions about how we treat older people, how we can face one of the greatest social, medical, economic and moral challenges of our times, and what it means to be human.
An extraordinary and deeply personal memoir, a manifesto and a call to arms, in one searingly beautiful narrative.

Find out more about the book and dementia at Facebook.com/WhereMemoriesGo

(P)2014 John Murray Press

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Murray Press
• Release date: Apr 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781444796636

Sally Magnusson

Bestselling author, journalist and broadcaster Sally Magnusson has written several books for adults and children, most recently her Sunday Times bestseller Where Memories Go (2014) about her mother's dementia, The Sealwoman's Gift (2018), her acclaimed debut novel, The Ninth Child (2020) and Music in the Dark (2022). Sally lives outside Glasgow.

Reviews for Where Memories Go

[roarer-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Although not a comfortable read, this is a valuable account of the challenges of supporting a loved-one living with dementia, with the impossibly difficult choices, the daunting reversal of roles, the indignities, the strains on the family, the exhaustion, &c. At times it seemed intrusive, but as I read I realised that only someone from a celebrated line of journalists would have both the understanding that here was a story that needed a voice and the skills to tackle the task. I also found myself wondering whether Mamie Baird herself would have approved, and concluded that such a book by Mamie's Baby fitted well with her own accounts of young parenthood.

[m.belljackson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

where memories go delivers many powerful messages, from being alert to earn signs of dementia
(absence of curiosity, blank stare, changes in writing, loss of short term memory)
to the dramatic changes still needed in care and treatments.

While we waste trillions of dollars in wars, outer space, and supporting politicians,
as with so many other diseases, there STILL is no sign of a cure or prevention that actually works.

Many readers may wish that the repetitive personal accounts could be shortened;
otherwise, we read the same story over and over after having absorbed it.
Yet, this does give us the experience of what Sally Magnusson and her family were going through.

[mimal_5 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

bookshelves: published-2014, radio-4, nonfiction, mental-health, fradio, biography, winter-20132014, those-autumn-years, families
Read from February 01 to 07, 2014

BOTW

BBC description: 'If dementia were a country it would be the world's 18th largest economy, somewhere between Turkey and Indonesia.'

Scottish broadcaster Sally Magnusson reads her moving but searingly honest account of her mother Mamie Baird's long struggle with dementia. Regarded as one of the finest journalists of her generation, Mamie Baird's whole life was a celebration of words - words that she fought to retain until the very end. Married to writer and broadcaster Magnus Magnusson, the working-class Scot was known for her witty, outrageous and fun-loving stories, her love of music and of life itself. As well as chronicling the anguish, the frustrations and the unexpected laughs that Sally and her sisters experienced while caring for their mother for eight years until her death in 2012, Sally seeks understanding from scientists, doctors, philosophers and historians in the face of one of the greatest challenges of our times. This is both a call to arms, a poignant account of what makes us human, and a portrait of what it is really like to lose a loved one day by day.

Abridged by: Sara Davies Produced by: Justine Willett Reader: Sally Magnusson: Sally Magnusson is a Scottish broadcaster and writer, currently working as the presenter of Reporting Scotland for BBC Scotland. Her father is the late broadcaster and writer Magnus Magnusson.

1. Warning Signs: the early but frighteningly tell-tale signs of dementia emerge on a trip to Mull.

2. Facing up: Despite the telltale warning signs, Sally and her family are still doing their best to ignore the truth.

3. The Death of a Husband: Sally Magnusson reads the moving memoir of her mother's long struggle with dementia.

4. Consolation in Forgetting: Sally sees that there is sometimes consolation in forgetting.

5. A Peaceful End: In this episode, a peaceful end amongst family.

Listen here



I like that the end was at home.

[timbazzett · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Sally Magnusson's WHERE MEMORIES GO: WHY DEMENTIA CHANGES EVERYTHING is, more than anything, a heartbreakingly beautiful love letter to her late mother, who succumbed, following a years-long struggle, to that cruellest of diseases.

Mamie Magnusson was a journalist and columnist, locally famous and beloved in her native Scotland, where, with her more famous husband, TV personality Magnus Magnusson, she raised five children of whom Sally is the oldest. The author's memories of her parents and the ways in which she and her siblings rallied together to provide care as her mother's mind slowly slipped away form the beating heart of this touching tribute. As an investigative journalist, Magnusson also inserts alternate chapters incorporating the research she undertook about the insidious nature of Alzheimer's and other causes of dementia; and she also documents the grossly inadequate and often casually cruel way in which dementia patients are treated and 'warehoused' by the health care system. And while all of this is helpful and informative, the thing that makes this book so damn good, so heart-wrenchingly effective, is the personal stuff: the stories of her parents' childhoods and courtship, her memories of her own childhood, the description of losing her father to pancreatic cancer, and, most of all, the final years, months and days of her mother's life.

There is humor here too, as Mamie was a person who loved to laugh and sing and make others laugh - a quality she kept right up to the bitter end, fighting through the fog of dementia, groping for words. And losing the 'words' was perhaps the cruelest cut of all, because Mamie loved words, made her living with words. But when the words began to go, it simply became too very sad. And what made it even worse was that Mamie seemed to know what was happening to her, as evidenced by her "heroic ability to summon words to express what [she] was going through." This is heartbreakingly clear in some of her last coherent sentences, phrases like -

"I've reached a stage where everything is nothing ... I'm just daft ... I just felt the whole world was going."

And I must readily admit here, that I could not remain objective about a book like this. Having lost my own aged mother in the past year, Magnusson's descriptions of her mother's rapid decline and the indignities endemic to old age made me remember my mother's last months and weeks. As I read Magnusson's account, I often found myself grimacing, on the verge of tears. I knew, of course, that a book like this could not end happily, and at the end, which I knew must come, I wept.

This is a book about love. If you have lost a beloved parent, you will relate. And yes, you will probably weep. HIGHLY recommended.