This heart-wrenching music video explores what it’s like to love someone with dementia
The greatest hope any of us can have about life is to see it through, in all its wonder and terror and beauty and tragedy, all the way to its natural end. For the millions of people who suffer from dementia, and the millions more who cherish their affected loved ones, this is unfortunately not the case: Dementia steals memory away in bits and pieces, disorientating and debilitating those with the disease.
It’s a heavy topic, and one that most people are not familiar with — for my own part, my grandpa had it, and watching him turn my dad, his son, away over and over again as a stranger was an experience I still can’t quite put into words. So it’s with great care that the band Daughter, whose music grapples regularly with deep themes, centered their latest music video on dementia, and specifically how people without it change and remember in relation to those with it.
“Doing The Right Thing,” the band’s first single for their upcoming sophomore album Not To Disappear, starts with an image of an old man taking a red dress to the dry cleaners. The story is unclear at first, but soon the pattern of images begins to emerge: An elderly woman staring blankly at a TV; a beleaguered man holding her hand and trying to catch her eye; the opening man weeping alone in a park. The song lyrics are similarly clear in intention: “But I find it soothing / When I am confined / I’m just fearing one day soon / I’ll lose my mind.”
We’re gonna warn you right now, the combination of the song and video together is brutal. But it’s an important and caring portrayal of a reality too many of us know, and also serves as an introduction to directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s video series about the disease. Watch below:
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