Short-Wave Memory Mum (Life-Imprisoned on Her Life Savings)

By Richard Lung

On 30 June 2020, according to a funeral director, every single care home in town had the covid. Social services twice stopped me from bringing Mum home with a live-in carer (as told in the second book in this series). They put her life in mortal danger, as a result. Yet, their Deprivation of Liberties renewal, which they have the gall to say is for her "safeguard," is just a rubber stamping of her imprisonment. Ella is old and frail, and we dearly want to be back together at home, as we have been, all my life. Her love will be in my heart, till I die.
Social services relentlessly obstructed my mother returning home. Afterwards, I found that the abduction of the helpless young and helpless old alike, children and the elderly, from their families, amounted to a national scandal. This is the fourth in a series, of books and booklets. about "Family-splitting" that has emerged from my mothers misfortunes, at the hands of British bureaucracy:
1) Nutcracker (social services family-splitting).
2) Home Free (How the misery makers of social services twice obstructed Mums home-coming with a live-in carer).
3) Talking To A Cat In The Moonlight (Poorly mind lovely mother).
4) Short-Wave Memory Mum (life-imprisoned on her life savings).
5) Impaired Imprisoned Innocent (speak thy grief). -- [Intended condensation of previous three titles.]
The first title is an abridged and edited version of the second title. "Home Free..." was the original publication, ah (up-dated) journal on Mums plight, recording her ordeal as it happened. Consequently, there is too much repetition, and incidental matter, not of general interest. Thus, the reason for the more convenient title, "Nutcracker," meant to draw the attention of the public to a problem for many families.
The third title is taken from a phrase, used by my mother, in telephone conversations, during the coronavirus crisis. Social services Best Interest meeting would not admit her to a discussion, supposed to be in her best interest: They were a (We Know) Best Interests meeting. They gave her zero words to speak for herself. That book gave her over 30,000 words scope to speak out. It is a legal obligation to monitor her wishes, under the Mental Capacity Act.
The fourth title, once again, reveals, much of the time, Ella was acutely aware of the injustice of her imprisonment. Ella is an intelligent woman, having to come to terms with her memory loss, and being caught in social services power game.
The title, Short-Wave Memory Mum, comes from Mums mind reminding me of short wave radio. My new, wave memory theory is introduced.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Lung
• Release date: Jul 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005463687

Richard Lung

My later years acknowledge the decisive benefit of the internet and the web in allowing me the possibility of publication, therefore giving the incentive to learn subjects to write about them.While, from my youth, I acknowledge the intellectual debt that I owed a social science degree, while coming to radically disagree, even as a student, with its out-look and aims.Whereas from middle age, I acknowledge how much I owed to the friendship of Dorothy Cowlin, largely the subject of my e-book, Dates and Dorothy. This is the second in a series of five books of my collected verse. Her letters to me, and my comments came out, in: Echoes of a Friend.....Authors have played a big part in my life.Years ago, two women independently asked me: Richard, don't you ever read anything but serious books?But Dorothy was an author who influenced me personally, as well as from the written page. And that makes all the difference.I was the author of the Democracy Science website since 1999. This combined scientific research with democratic reform. It is now mainly used as an archive. Since 2014, I have written e-books.I have only become a book author myself, on retiring age, starting at stopping time!2014, slightly modified 2022.

Book preview

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction: my Wave Memory theory.

Short-Wave Memory Mum (life-imprisoned on her life savings)

June

July

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Preface

On 30 june 2020, according to a funeral director, every single care home in town had the covid. Social services twice stopped me from bringing Mum home with a live-in carer (as told in the second book in this series). They put her life in mortal danger, as a result. Yet, their Deprivation of Liberties renewal, which they have the gall to say is for her safeguard, is just a rubber stamping of her imprisonment. Ella is old and frail, and we dearly want to be back together at home, as we have been, all my life. Her love will be in my heart, till I die.

Social services relentlessly obstructed my mother returning home. Afterwards, I found that the abduction of the helpless young and helpless old alike, children and the elderly, from their families, amounted to a national scandal. This is the fourth in a series, of books and booklets. about Family-splitting that has emerged from my mothers misfortunes, at the hands of British bureaucracy:

1) Nutcracker (social services family-splitting).

2) Home Free (How the misery makers of social services twice obstructed Mums home-coming with a live-in carer).

3) Talking To A Cat In The Moonlight (Poorly mind lovely mother).

4) Short-Wave Memory Mum (life-imprisoned on her life savings).

5) Impaired Imprisoned Innocent (speak thy grief). -- [Intended condensation of previous three titles.]

The first title is an abridged and edited version of the second title. Home Free... was the original publication, an (up-dated) journal on Mums plight, recording her ordeal as it happened. Consequently, there is too much repetition, and incidental matter, not of general interest. Thus, the reason for the more convenient title, Nutcracker, meant to draw the attention of the public to a problem for many families.

The third title is taken from a phrase, used by my mother, in telephone conversations, during the coronavirus crisis. Social services Best Interest meeting would not admit her to a discussion, supposed to be in her best interest: They were a (We Know) Best Interests meeting. They gave her zero words to speak for herself. That book gave her over 30,000 words scope to speak out. It is a legal obligation to monitor her wishes, under the Mental Capacity Act.

The fourth title, once again, reveals, much of the time, Ella was acutely aware of the injustice of her imprisonment. Ella is an intelligent woman, having to come to terms with her memory loss, and being caught in social services power game.

The title, Short-Wave Memory Mum, comes from Mums mind reminding me of short wave radio. My new, wave memory theory is introduced in the following introduction.

A few words here about the subtitle, life imprisonment on her life savings. Currently, the county council has stated its intention, as they put it, to pursue the debt (which social services themselves incurred by detaining my mother in a care home). My mother is being made to pay with the savings of a lifetimes work, meant for the leisure of her retirement, to force her being miserably imprisoned for the rest of her life.

The law (in the form of the Mental Capacity Act) which the Hardie report says is not being implemented, obliges scrupulous attention to the wishes of the mentally impaired. This is what I am giving, and what this book conveys, with the rest of the series.

The county council knows that the Ombudsman will investigate my complaint. Instead of even waiting for an independent verdict, they are exerting the total control (totalitarianism) of combining all three branches of government: administration, executive, and judiciary role, as well.

Of course, after careful consideration of an independent judicial decision, those affected are free to make up their own mind, whether it is a good ruling. But the county council official, who contacted me, was not even prepared to do that. (In a manner of speaking, he decided to be judge, jury and executioner!)

This country is not under martial law. We are not obliged to give a knee-jerk obedience to the state. British career politics mimics totalitarian states, like imperialist or communist lands of little dictators, where the officials word is law.

As free citizens, we are only obliged to pay for the service, we accept.

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Introduction: my Wave Memory theory.

Table Of Contents

Most of the confusion in these conversations comes from my not being able to write it all down, and not from the undoubted confusion in my mothers mind. Much is left out, and much is paraphrase, which I tend to put in brackets, because it probably is a less exact reporting of our speech than the rest of the transcription.

Ella gets names and places all wrong in her mind. She is hopelessly muddled. Actually, her mind is doing damage control. Associating the names, of people she knew, with nearby places, is a traditional memory aid or mnemonic skill. Her mind is trying to retain what memory she has. Ella is also doing what generations of migrants do, which is to take old names to new places, and bring a comforting familiarity to the strange. Beneath Ellas confused imaginings, a useful memory function is being performed. So, I don’t correct her, any more, which is a bit like trying to pick a shielding scab off a wound. It may be unsightly, but is serving a healing purpose.

While professionals were observing Ella, I was observing the professionals (as they, no doubt, me). Because they are strangers, they only see the damage, that has rendered her mind incapable. They dismiss her as a mental invalid, rather as the physically handicapped used to be regarded as not valid, and segregated.

Because I have known my mother all my life, I can see the recuperative power of her mind, salvaging memories, to mark out her occluded strange new existence.

This unappreciated situation may be compared with the state of anthropology, in which Bronislaw Malinowski found it. What was dismissed as savage superstition might be serving a useful psychological purpose. To give a simple example of his philosophy of functionalism: The Rain-dance may not bring rain but it may bring the community together, to face times of hardship.

The function exists on an unconscious emotional level, not in its factual pretensions.

This cross-fertilisation of anthropology with psychology also came from the opposite field of study. To better understand the unconscious mind, Carl Gustav Jung visited traditional tribal peoples of Africa and America, closer to the original human way of thinking. Likewise, he studied ancient and medieval documents, for instance, the I Ching, Gnosticism, and Alchemy.

Another social worker rubber-stamping another unspeakable deprivation of liberty assessment, from the social services (state police), on Ella, judged her, by a (2 june 2020) phone call, a very charming lady but doesn’t know her own needs. That was after I poured my heart out, at the injustices of Ellas treatment (essentially the section on the Best Interests meeting, in my journal, Home Free...). All of this was ignored in the subsequent Deprivation form.

(The name of the social worker, responsible for the assessment, was not given on the document, tho she said it would be there.) She said the deprivaton was a duty of care. That is to say social services hiring out the care home as my mothers jailers, at her own expense.

They couldn't care less about what misery they inflict, or its helpless protests. Human hypocrisy will yet be its undoing, as deceit amounts to self-deceit, and a failure to adjust to reality.

The social worker also said that Ella was staying in her bedroom, after they changed her medication. I think they must have changed it again, because Ella was now back in the lounge, and her manner was changed. I don’t know quite how to describe it, sort of quietly beseeching, and extra affectionate.

When does medication become manipulation? Certainly, I would not trust social services, that arm of government control. The authorities have been pumping Ella with tablets, everyday, to facilate their institutionalising her, which is what it amounts to. (It reminds of that movie, called: Brazil, or any dystopia, going by the generic name of Orwellian.) At home, much less intrusive dosage probably would have been called for.

In the past, I noted that Ella was managing with her speech, but sometimes it was a struggle. I couldn’t help but wonder how much medication had to do with this.

On 21 June, Ellas speech was fairly feeble and slow. Loss of short term memory was more in evidence from her repeated questions. At the end of a long call, her anxiety, to hear from me again, made her go round in circles, with this request. Patience and love was called for, and I was glad to give it.

On that day, also, Ella expressed the timeless monotony, of being sat in a room in a chair, all day. The Deprivation of Liberty resembles a psychologists sensory deprivation experiment, that rapidly drives every subject into hallucinatory madness! The worst kind of environment, you could have, for a dementia patient. But the blooming experts don’t know or care.

Ella couples a resident, she christens Win, with a husband, because she knew her former friend, with this name, as one of a couple. Partly, this is about them, rather than her actual companion, in the lounge.

However, mentally normal people also bring preconceptions, based on former acquaintances, to their understanding, or misunderstanding, of new ones. This is the second time Ella grafted an old friends name onto a new acquaintance, at the residence. Her mind appears to be conducting a memory-salvaging operation, as an anchor of familiarity, in strange and bewildering surroundings.

Also, Ella tended to use my name, Richard, as one familiar to hand, tho she knew, when questioned, that she did not actually mean me. And was muddled by my saying that I am Richard, because she said she knew that.

In my experience, a change of society has led me to match old acquiantance with new, on no more than a vague resemblance. It's comforting, I think.

There appears to be a continuity between a normal mind and Ellas mental impairment, even if it involves a big shift, like a shift from medium wave to short wave radio. Continuity of memory might be compared to the longer wave reception of a radio station. The analogy would run, that Ellas loss of memory is more like a loss of continuous memory or a loss of long and medium wave radio reception, leaving her only broken-up short wave reception. Memories may be more or less still there, but they are locked in a very short band of access.

On short wave radio, you’re always blundering into neighboring stations, you don’t want. And memory has been compared to a rugged terrain, in which it is easy to slip off the desired path. Again, this is normal to any mind but it is greatly accentuated for the dementia patient.

The continuity of normal memory, like a road, has changed, with Ellas dementia, into stepping stones, from which it is easy to stumble, and get bogged down or lost. It resembles a loss of capacity for logic, or the ability of the mind to follow consecutive steps. But Ella still can reason wisely, on the spot. And she still comes up with good advice, days after a topic was discussed. Even if she comes up with it again, in a confused way, that you could not relate, at first, to a former discussion, the essence of what she says, is still worth heeding.

No doubt, in accord with the Mental Capacity Act, professionals are required, at intervals, to keep a measure of the dementia patients memory. When I was visiting, shortly after Ella was hospitalised, the staff nurse came round with a few test questions, like: where do you live; and how old are you. On 13 June, and 17 July, Mum asked me these two questions. It may have been that she was recently tested, and, failing to answer, was anxious to know from me.

Centralised government produces these standardised questions, which can be collected by machines, to become the statistics of mass observation. Such quiz show intelligence is pedantic and impersonal, and not a basis for dealing with individual human beings, in relationships of family and friends. My mothers reaction to her forgetfulness, with modesty, humility and humor, deserved better.

A day later, on 14 June, I did get the feeling that Ella was being fed the official line about detaining her in the care home. If there was a mental test, the previous day, that could have been the (specious) reaction to its results. (She reverted to her usual views, afterwards.) That is just my speculation, directed by straws in the wind, from Ellas conversation, on those two days. It doesn’t matter when the testers came. It is perhaps of some interest to know one could sometimes pick up a trace of their recent presence in Ellas conversation.

On 18 June, Ella believed that she had been out for a country walk, in the sunshine, to the village, after the first village, from the farm, where she used to live. Ella has made that walk, when she was very young. She told me a good story about it.

I took her dream or vision as normal. In dull weather, it would be natural to dream of the sunshine. Kept locked in a care home, it would be natural for a country girl to dream of going on a country walk.

Even her belief, in the reality of her experience, is not so far removed from the normal. We believe our dreams, and even have a lingering belief in them, on waking up. I did not question the reality of her dream. Life is a dream. As has been recognised from time immemorial. And when I helped her locate herself, apart from a momentary confusion, she fell-in with her present situation.

Dreaming, that she went for a walk in