One of the beneficial side effects of our parents' dementia was discovering our genealogy. There were two reasons for this.

My mother had always been the chief family historian. but her fading memories, and her inability to express herself meant that a great deal of family history was being lost. At the top of one of the wardrobes in the spare room was a large suitcase filled with photographs, some dating back over 90 years. To most of us these people were unknown, but my mother used to be able to point them out, name them all, describe where they fitted into the family tree, and recount anecdotes about them. Now, each time she looked at them, there was less to say. To me it seemed terribly sad that these half-familiar faces in faded photographs were slowly being forgotten. I saw a time when no-one would remember anything of them, and they would all be unceremoniously thrown out as old junk. I embarked on a project to identify every single face in all the old photographs. I would sit with my mother and make notes as she talked. If faces were not recognised, I would put them aside and try again another day, when perhaps my mother's memory would be clearer. Even if she was sure, I might show her the same photograph again a few days later, just to confirm the original identification. In time, all the photos were numbered, and against each number I kept a set of codes - one for each of our old relatives.

About the same time this was going on, my father started attending talks on genealogy, and made a few stuttering attempts to start a family tree. He never really got any further than identifying his parents' and grandparents' birth, marriage and death certificates in the civil registry of the United Kingdom. I thought genealogy would be a good hobby for him, and so I tried to give him a hand now and then. Over many weeks we sketched out the skeleton of a family tree. I would keep stopping, saying 'there you go, dad. You just do a bit more on your own now.' but he never did. Before I knew it, I had the genealogy bug myself, and the family tree became a project of mine. My dad retired to the sidelines and cheered me on.

Then one day I realised that the photographs and the family tree were just made for each other. A little exploration of the features of the genealogy software I was using showed that the two could be easily combined in an illustrated book about the family. It was all ridiculously easy.

I printed out the book, and had it bound in navy blue canvas boards, embossed in gold leaf, and presented it to my parents on their 60th wedding anniversary. My mother appeared to be delighted at the time. A couple of days later I asked her if she had been reading it, and in a very off-hand tone she said, 'oh, no.' It was deflating for me, and I had to accept that it had made her happy at least once, and that was good enough.

Since then the research has continued deeper into history, and reached out to rediscover long lost cousins all over the world. We have all learnt a lot from it. Though my parents came to Australia from England in the early 1950s we discovered that the family had actually been to Australia 100 years earlier than that, and had travelled back and forth at least three times. We have managed to reconstruct several of the First World War experiences of our grandparents generation, and have learnt things about them that even my parents didn't know, such that there were several younger siblings to our grandparents who did not survive childhood. After their untimely deaths, they have never been spoken of.

In a way, I suppose this research has made it easier to accept that we are all only here for a short time.