The human mind is a precious and vulnerable thing. We live with our memories and when we are robbed of them and a condition like dementia takes hold, it can be cruel and debilitating. As we've heard, it's estimated that 50,000 people in Wales are living with dementia, but it affects not just individuals, but entire families who have to deal with grief and loss every day, even though their loved one is sitting in front of them. 

My grandma, Doreen, had dementia. She lived into her hundred-and-first year, but the final years of her life were taken from her gradually, piece by piece. She'd been a keen cook and baker and she was baking Welsh cakes on her baking stone well into her ninety-eighth year, but she'd forget to add the sugar or the salt or leave them on the bakestone a moment too long. Those were some of the first signs.

She used to sew and crochet and she'd delight in telling people that when my father was little, she'd made his entire school uniform, even down to the grammar school blazer, with the barathea material she'd bought in Pontypridd market, and she'd bought the school badge and sewed it on. But that solace of sewing and using her hands had escaped her more and more in her final years. The postman would see her in the window, sitting there, no longer sewing, but looking out and watching the world go by.

My grandma loved to walk. When my sister and I were little, we'd go on walks on Nelson mountain, picking blackberries and blueberries, but more and more, as she got further into her 90s and the dementia was firming its grip, she'd think that she could walk further than she could, and would keep on walking on the uneven paths near her home, being totally oblivious to the danger of falling. I remember her calling my parents' house one day and I'd answered it and she asked me, 'Why is it that I can't do all of the things that I used to do?', and she wished that she could walk and walk. She'd get frustrated and she'd be lonely, and even though my parents visited her every day, as well as carers, she'd feel sad and forget that they'd been. 

When her condition deteriorated, she agreed that she'd be more comfortable and more safe in a home, though she did still fall, and after one fall, she went to Prince Charles Hospital with my mother and she was kept—a lady in her nineties; 99 years of age—on a trolley in a corridor for nine hours. This was not the fault of the doctors or the nurses or the ambulance crew; it was the fault of the system that underfunds its health service to the extent that a lady of 99 was left without specialised support in the middle of the night. We need dementia services across primary care and for hospitals and care homes to be integrated and properly funded. We need to invest and research into how to diagnose dementia more accurately and we desperately need more support for patients and their families after diagnosis so that they aren't robbed of yet more agency.

But, Dirprwy Lywydd, in spite of the sadness that marked her final years with us, my grandma had a very happy life. And although dementia robbed her of so many memories, she was singing until the end. She loved to sing. Her favourites were 'Danny Boy' and 'Mother Machree' and she sang both on her hundredth birthday. I've never known anyone else to sing 'Mother Machree', so whenever I hear those words, I think of her and I'll share some of those with you in closing, Dirprwy Lywydd.

'There's a place in my mem'ry, / My life, that you fill, / No other can take it, / No one ever will. / Sure, I love the dear silver / That shines in your hair, / And the brow that's all furrowed, / And wrinkled with care. / I kiss the dear fingers, / So toil-worn for me, / Oh, God bless you and keep you, / Mother Machree.'