‘BUT I just told you Daddy… Weren’t you listening?’ Either I wasn’t or my penchant for forgetting names is spreading. Which is a bit worrying, and not just for my son.

My mother died last year at the age of 92 living in the house she designed herself for her retirement and moved into over thirty years ago. Over the last few weeks, my brothers and I have been sorting through her things. No mean task, since she didn’t seem to have thrown anything out in all that time… One of the pleasant things was the discovery of photos that we never knew existed. Photos of my mother as a child, of her father from the first World War during his military service in India and of ourselves as children.

The memories came flooding back. Memories are precious: lose them and you lose a bit of yourself.

My mother suffered from memory loss, which meant that she couldn’t always remember whether she’d had lunch, taken her medicine or turned the gas off. Fortunately she had the help and support she needed to stay in her own home, but it was sad watching her world contract.

She’d been a mum to three children, a headteacher, a town councillor, an active member of her local church. But as her memory faded some of the aspects of her life that defined her as a person, were denied her. It was like bits of her weren’t there anymore.

One of the cruellest things about dementia is the pain and distress that it causes to families as they witness their loved one disappearing before their eyes.

Our brains work a bit like a computer. Memories themselves are stored in several places in the brain and the hippocampus references the locations when we need them – hence the ‘tip of the tongue’ phenomenon of knowing that we know something, but being momentarily unable to recall it. We can remember things from yesteryear more clearly than what we had for lunch as we’ve had longer in which to practice remembering them.

Our memories and experiences are individual pieces that together make up the complex jigsaw of our life. Good or bad; happy or sad; whether we wanted them to happen or not, every piece has its place. And when some of the pieces go missing the puzzle loses its integrity.

Finding bits of my puzzle that were long lost when I was sorting out my mother’s house was a lovely surprise. But I’m wondering now where I’ve misplaced some more recent pieces of my jigsaw.

For now I’ll put it down to rushing to have breakfast, get to school on time, feed and walk the dog and catch the train to work and try to forget about it.