Laurie Graham
Laurie Graham
Laurie Graham, CMis a Canadian downhill skier who represented Canada at the 1980, 1984 and 1988 Winter Olympics. She won six World Cup victories and three National Downhill titles in her eleven years on the National Ski Team. She was the first North American woman to win a World Cup Super Giant Slalom skiing. She was the first North American to win on home soil at Mont-Tremblant, Quebec. In addition, Graham posted 34 top 10 FIS World Cup Downhill results...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth25 November 1947
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I have a magpie mind, by which I mean I see and hear little things - photos, fragments of conversation - and store them away for future use.
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Far more than dreading ending up in a care home myself, I dread having to put my husband in one.
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The terror dementia sufferers must feel is unimaginable, but the techniques they use to hide their difficulties - the ducking and diving and keeping the world laughing - are perfectly understandable.
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Being eye candy always was a short-term career, and here's the reason. The world finds young women more attractive than old women because youthfulness signals fertility.
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I hate to think I ever make my husband frightened or unhappy, but I suspect I do.
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In the Seventies, my children played in the street, read politically incorrect stories, ate home-cooked food and occasional junk and, yes, were sometimes smacked.
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I've been lucky enough to travel widely. When you're based in Europe, it's very easy to go to Madrid or Budapest for the weekend. I also lived in Italy for ten years and now live in Ireland.
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With Alzheimer's, recent memory is affected first. At the start, you count the memory loss in days, then hours - then in minutes. But there's also an insidious backward creep of deterioration.
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My mother was a fastidious and orderly homemaker. I was the messy but creative type. I picture her following behind me through life with a damp rag and an air of exasperation.
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My husband is stricken with dementia, and it's a trick of his condition that events and people from his past are more real to him than what happened five minutes ago.
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I love working fictional characters into a piece of history. It plays to my strengths, which are characterization and dialogue, and assists me in my admitted weakness, plot.
feels novels
As well as writing novels and doing short-order journalism, I am also the full-time carer of my husband, who has Alzheimer's. Each day feels like a race that must be run.
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I'm thankful my parents obliged me to live with the unvarnished truth: I might not have been a looker, but I was a better speller than the prettiest girl in my class, and I was funnier, too.
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Caring burns a lot of fuel - psychological and physical, too, if any lifting is involved. The energy tank is soon emptied, and the toll caring takes is well documented. It's called carer burn-out.