Martin King has opened up about the difficulties of filming his new documentary about dementia, following his late mum’s diagnosis.
In the new show, We Need to Talk About Dementia, Martin will look back how it impacted her life – as well as the family as a whole.
His mum Christina, who sadly passed away in 2019, had dementia and the family struggled to tell her about their father’s death.
Martin Snr passed away just a month prior to Christina, and Martin admits revisiting these memories in the documentary was incredibly tough – but necessary, as he hopes to draw awareness.
“The reason I’m making the documentary is because I think dementia is on the rise – we are an ageing nation – so dementia is going to be much more prevalent.”
He continued, “There needs to be a greater understanding and empathy for the person going through it and the family.
“I said to my wife after filming that this was really starting to become upsetting. Revisiting some of the sad memories is quite tough.
“My dad’s fear, all along, when my mother was diagnosed, was that she would forget him. And she did — she did forget him — and that really hurt him. For the love of his life to forget who he was, that broke his heart.”
The family decided to keep the news of his passing to themselves, but Christina soon figured it out.
“We didn’t tell my mother when he died. It was decided it was best not to tell her and the people that were there thought it was for the best,” he told Evoke.ie.
“You tell somebody something that is traumatic and she will go to first-stage grief — but then it could be the next day, the next week, the next hour and she will remember again and it’s just retraumatising them time after time.
“But she figured it out for herself. She said it to my sister and then she died a few days later.”
The Virgin Media presenter previously revealed that while it’s been an incredibly tough year, he’s relieved they didn’t have to experience the Covid-19 pandemic.
“I have thought that many, many times this year. From March not being able to go up and see them, I don’t know how she would have coped. There is a blessing in that I suppose in that they went before this started,” he told The Sun.
“But I do feel so sorry for people who have lost loved ones to Covid and never got a proper chance to say goodbye. I know I still miss my parents terribly, every single day.
“You think the first year is going to be bad, with the first birthdays without them and then their first anniversary but I think the second year is even tougher.”