Entering a high-care nursing home is like walking into a vision of hell. Broken bodies huddle in wheelchairs or lie, immobile, in stark rooms. Eyes stare unseeingly, any sense of awareness lost within shattered minds. Voices shout random words.

Visitors sit with loved ones, trying to communicate. Hoping for some sign of recognition. Wondering if this helpless dependence lies in their own future.

Those few patients capable of movement pace endlessly, like wild animals in a cage. At mealtimes, trembling hands attempt to convey food between plate and mouth, failing more often than not. Overworked staff feed those who cannot cope, trying to do the impossible and be everywhere at once. Patience is an essential job requirement.

My mother, completely unable to look after herself, spent the last few weeks of her life in a high-care nursing home. It took two staff and a hoist just to get her frail body out of bed. It was a nightmare, both for her and anyone who visited, the terrible culmination of a two-year period in which the relentless progress of dementia transformed her into a stranger. Our memory of that time inevitably casts a dark shadow over the 88 years that had gone before.