Kate is one of those who have lived at the home for many years. Her memory fails a lot, but she tries to be strong anyway.
On her bedside table she has a picture of herself from the time when she was 25 years old. It was taken by her sister in New York during their travel around the world. The trip went from Stockholm to Copenhagen to Hamburg to Paris to Valencia to Cairo to Cape Town to Buenos Aires to New York to California to Tokyo to Hong Kong to Mumbai to Moscow to London. In London she met her bellowed Rose. She stayed in London with Rose for almost a year.
She looks at the picture every morning and thinks of the adventures. She thinks about the day in New York when the picture was taken, but most of all she thinks about Rose.
It’s harder for her to think of what just happened. It happens often that she wants to eat dinner just after she ate. The doctors have many ideas of what to do to help Kate. They try one thing after another. They change her medications and routines time after time. But never have anyone asked Kate of what she thinks, what she wants, what she needs. Yes, her brains often fail and her memory is lacking, but she does have feelings.
She feels happy every time when Felix comes tripping against her, when he jumps up to the chair next to her, when he sleeps on her feet and every time she hears him purr.
She feels appreciation every time her daughter comes to visit.
She feels satisfied after every conversation with her friends at the home.
She feels sad when they loosing people at the home.
She feels disappointed, disrespected, ignored, offended, underestimated, invalidated, controlled, imprisoned, powerless, suffocated, abounded, confused, invisible, rejected, attacked, afraid, insecure, scared and alone every time they treat her as an object. She feels it every time they don’t ask her. She feels it every time.
Kate is strong. Sometimes she asks “why”. Sometimes she just refuse.
/elsa jannborg
With inspiration from
Katie Lloyd Thomas, ‘Going into the Mould’ in Radical Philosophy, vol. 144, July/August 2007, pp. 16-25.
archandphil 
December 12, 2014 at 7:22 pm
I really like the text, it is a good expression of how one can feel as a human when you are treated as if you do not exist. I really like the part “but never have anyone asked Kate of what she thinks, what she wants, what she needs. Yes, her brains often fail and her memory is lacking, but she does have feelings”. I also like this part in the end of the text “She feels […] alone every time they treat her as an object.” And here I can glimpse a connection to the text. /Lovisa Wallgren