午夜剧场

Eight years have passed since my mother developed dementia at the age of 80. I cared for her at home for the first two and a half years, but as her symptoms progressed, it became unmanageable. In January 2017, I moved her into a group home, a facility where elderly people with dementia live together in a group.

I compiled the various aspects of home caregiving into a book titled "Mom, I'm Sorry: A 50-Year-Old Single Man's Caregiving Struggle" (Nikkei BP). Five and a half years have passed since then. This book is a sequel that summarizes the various experiences related to the group home.

Probably few people who do not have an elderly family member with dementia know what a group home actually is.

However, once I actually moved my mother in and began visiting her, I found it to be a very stimulating "front line." The long-term care insurance system that started in 2000 has produced certain results despite various problems. One of those results was the group home facility, where "elderly people with dementia who have lived in the area gather in small groups to live in a home-like environment."

What impressed me most was that caregiving techniques had advanced significantly since the time I saw off my own grandparents. The conversational techniques used by the group home staff—the techniques of how to interact so that elderly people with dementia can live with peace of mind—seemed to have reached the level of a work of art.

That said, problems never cease. Life in a group home is a continuous cycle where as soon as one problem is solved, the next one arises. In that regard, it was no different from caregiving at home.

And no matter how hard one works to create a bright life, there is no changing the fact that a group home is a place where people spend the final moments of their lives, and most will depart for the next world from there.

I wrote this book with the aim of providing readers with as objective an overview as possible of the "present" of such group homes. After all, there is no human who does not die. Everyone has the potential to become a resident of a group home someday.

My unvarnished truth is that this is a book for you, who will one day grow old and die.

Shinya Matsuura

Nikkei BP

304 pages, 1,760 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and job titles are those at the time of publication.