Take Me Swimming

‘The day I don’t know who you are, promise to take me swimming’ – a melancholic promise between a husband and wife as her Alzheimer’s disease progresses. 

When Thady (Barry Ward) returns to his parents’ home for a neighbour’s wake, he is shocked by his mother’s decline (Olwen Fouéré, also seen in The Wake). Gone is the eloquent artist of the television interviews, and here now is a woman who has lost her capacity to carry out the most mundane tasks and spends her days in a local care centre. When he finds the crumpled promise in the pocket of an old dressing gown, the rest of his visit is spent bitterly resenting his mother’s condition and his father’s stoic acceptance. It is only when his mother goes missing in the middle of the night that he begins to understand how their love transcends her condition.

Director Claire Dix, producer Róisín Geraghty and writer Ailbhe Keogan have since collaborated on the feature film Sunlight.

This film is part of F-Rated: Short Films by Irish Women. To view more from the collection click here.