Last night I watched a program on ABC Television, which dealt with how the advance of dementia is, uncharacteristically, an agent in uncovering memories, particularly those of Holocaust survivors. Discovery of this phenomenon has resulted in changes in the way aged care facilities in Australia work with these survivors.

Most of the survivors never spoke of their Holocaust experiences. For their children this period was a blank. However, as dementia altered the survivors' mental landscape, deeply buried anxieties began to resurface. At first these changes were perceived as unrelated, but in time patterns began to emerge. For example, being in a bathroom with a shower could bring back memories of the gas chambers. Food hoarding can be a response to memories of the ghettos. The locked gates and routines of the dementia wards can bring back the concentration camps. Strong smelling disinfectants? Delousing. Even waiting in lines, or seeing uniforms could have adverse effects.

This is thought to be a form of latent post-traumatic stress syndrome. Now, in some Australian nursing homes staff undergo special training which includes a visit to the Sydney Jewish Museum to learn about the events of the Holocaust. There is also talk of enacting a similar program in time to deal with the survivors of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

I found this all very interesting and wondered if there is anything in it that can be applied closer to home. My father and grandfathers had war experiences of a different sort, but at times they were traumatic nevertheless. And the delayed reaction is something we've observed in all three of them.

When I recently asked Uncle Bob if he could recall any of his father's (my grandfather's) experiences during WWI, he was able to give me very little, saying that his father had been reluctant to talk about this period of his life. However, for most of his later years, granddad was living in Derby with us; in fact, he moved into my bedroom after I left for college. It was during these years that he began to open up, and related to Greg a number of chilling anecdotes about the years he, his brother, and future brother-in-law - who all served together in the infantry - spent in Flanders.

My other grandfather - also an infantryman in Flanders - survived only to his fifties, but he too began to open up in his later years, and passed on some stories, one of them quite devastating, to another of my uncles, who is also now dead.

And in my dad's case, we can actually pinpoint the time he began to open up almost to the day. He and mum had been to see the film 'Titanic' that day. I arrived at the house some time later, after dark. Dad was very uncharacteristically praising of the film. Then, with no discernable preamble, he began to talk in detail about the night in February 1942 when the merchant ship he was serving on as an RAF MSFU ground crewman was torpedoed by a German U-boat. The story was rivetting for the detail about other men aboard the ship and the ways they behaved, from the most noble of actions to the most despicable, when the ship starting sinking, and afterwards, as the men attempted to save themselves in the sea. Not even mum had heard the details. At a later stage, dad went even deeper in the story, and talked about how his friend had died, a scene not unlike the last scene in the film - in which the character of Jack slips below the surface. It was this that had so obviously triggered the powerful memory.

It has been very important to me that these long buried memories eventually came to light and have now been recorded. I do not know why, but there may yet prove to be a reason. Who knows, one day soon we may find we will have cause to recall these memories and may need to arrange the present to better insulate it from the past.