Martin King has opened up about his late mum’s battle with dementia.
The Irish presenter sadly lost both of his parents, Martin and Christina Boyle, in the summer of 2019 within just four weeks of each other.
Speaking to the RTÉ Guide, Martin admitted he struggled with his mother’s condition, admitting it was “emotionally very painful” to go through.
He told the publication: “On Mother’s Day we went to my mam’s grave and I said to my wife Jenny that I didn’t want to let my mother’s memory down.”
“Even now I want to get a better understanding of dementia because I didn’t handle it well when my mother had it. Last week, I sat down with my sisters to talk about how we dealt with it back then. We never sat down and spoke about that before.”
“That opened up memories and boxes that I thought we had sorted but hopefully we’ll get to resolve them.”
Remembering his mother, the 57-year-old said: “Our mam was great fun; a peacemaker too. She had to be with six kids. She was a great mam and a great grand mam and then dementia came knocking at the door.”
“She was in denial because she was afraid. And there was also the stigma that goes with it. Dementia and Alzheimer’s are called the long goodbye for a reason.”
“You can’t stop it as it’s happening and it’s emotionally very painful to go through. But I wonder what it was like for mam.”
“In the early stages, when mam got something wrong, I would try to fix it. I would constantly correct her when she called dad a different name. [She’d say] ‘No that’s not my husband.’ And I would see the hurt in his eyes.”
“Instead of fixing it, I was making her confusion worse,” he revealed.
“The death of my father was a huge shock. He was in hospital and was due to go back to the nursing home on Tuesday but the day before he slipped away.”
Pic Brian McEvoy
“With my mam, we knew it was coming and we prepared ourselves for that.”
“But when it did happen, within four weeks of my dad, it was a lot to take in but we did deal with it as a family. I went back to work after a few days and I realise now that was too soon.”
Martin is set to revisit his mother’s battle with dementia in a documentary entitled ‘We Need To Talk About Dementia’ airing later this month on Virgin Media One.
