In the bright hot Summer with the sun high and glorious, I tried to pretend I was just being ridiculous. Its just a little confusion, I thought. As one who often walked upstairs and scratched her head and walked back down again, WITHOUT whatever I had gone up for, I thought it was just a momentary lapse. I was living in the home of Siobhans sister, Maura Maura was in a nursing home with Alzheimers and it was considered that I, as the crazy homeless hippy who never invested in bricks, should live in her house, and keep it heated and lit and safe from marauding trespassers and invaders, that would see the contents insurance policy become a moot point. It was a beautiful house with gardens and bathrooms and garage in a quiet leafy avenue, filled from pillar to post with grand antique furniture and heirlooms and artwork and I thought it was my birthday, every day. Maura had retired here after a lifetime spent in England, where she had trained and worked as a Nurse, married a Doctor, and had an only child, Sean ( nicknamed Chota - *Indian dialect for little one as a nod to her husbands family being sequestered in Bombay during the time of the Raj*) - a severely autistic son who has resided in residential care for decades, as he was unmanageable and liable to injure himself or another. She became a widow just before she moved over after the sudden death of her beloved husband, a man she referred to all her life as Dear Old John, and he of her as My beloved Poppet Siobhan was her constant companion, meeting for lunch or coffee, carrot cake and shopping, and a jar twice a week with Little Thomasina, who took the mickey about Dear Old John and made her laugh. Maura was always a character, who traveled and drank and enjoyed life to the full, holidaying with the girls at least twice a year, smoking Marlboro light through a holder, squinting through the sunny smoke in Athens, or Rome, or Portugal. She began to turn up at odd times, to forget to eat, to say the same thing over and over again, to present at the hall door in the Square at 11pm at night, in weather that you wouldnt put a spade out in, looking lost and vulnerable with a plastic Mac and hat on in the teeming rain. For some reason I was in the Doctors with Maura while she was being given The Test What year were you born? - What year is it now? - Who is the President? - Count backwards from 100 in 7s - Fold this paper in half and put it on the table - Remember these lines I am going to say now and Ill ask you in a minute - says the Doctor who is diagnosing. She looks to me for help, and raising her eyebrows and winking, gives me the beck to give her a dig out, her blue eyes huge and troubled. I have to sit on my hands, and zip my mouth. They need a true picture and no coaching from the hurlers on the ditch. It was heartbreaking to abandon her, and she knew. She knew. Moving swiftly along, the disease advanced as it inexorably does, and she was admitted, tagged, and went downhill fast. Because there was more meat on a butchers pencil, her joints became swollen and stiff and had to be fleece padded on the air bed, when the swallowing went, she was peg fed - with a drip attached to her tiny flat stomach. Siobhan watched all this, and cared for her sister as she had cared for people all her life, gently and easily, with the minimum of fuss, showing no shock or revulsion, just a calm, placid, stoic sense of acceptance, and a killer sense of humour- where she would be in the knots of laughter at moments of black comedy. . Months and Months after she had stopped talking , or moving, her huge blue eyes vacantly staring at a spot on the ceiling when she was awake, albeit catatonic, Maura watched me come in from a week of nights on a Ship from the Port, dragging a red case on wheels and hurling it into the corner. Hello Emmy I chirped expecting silence. She turned her eyes to face me. Who are you to me? says she. WOW< christ almighty I thought.... Siobhans daughter, Michelle. And what are you to me ? A Niece says I. Just a Niece?? says she and turned her face sadly to the wall. I told Siobhan this amazing development when I got home, on the phone, so I had no idea what reactions she displayed, or what fleeting thoughts would manifest darkening shadows across her face momentarily. It would take a year for me to find out. Siobhan knew my lovers name began with a vowel and ended with N so she called him Owen, which was not his name. I liked to think it was a form of word blindness, as I see words weirdly too. Then when I came home she would be sitting with Owen having got locked out. Again. She would often knock and ask for my spare key, and whisper Dont tell Tom . Then purses joined the keys, and sooner than Johnny wrote the note, I am sitting back in the Doctors surgery listening to - What year were you born? Who is the president? What year is it now, and month? Count back for me from 100 in 7s. In a mirror image of her sister Siobhan turns her impossibly big blue eyes to me, and she knows too, and she knows that I know. ****************************** I have actually been asked to be the guest speaker at The Alzheimers Society Coffee Morning in Cafe Fusion next week. Thursday 21st November 11am - 1 pm Please come along to listen or get help, and advice from people who can help and advise and put you in touch with support and assistance. Their JOB is to help you, with as much discretion and dignity as that entails. There are families all over here trying to go it alone,but the pressure that puts on the health, both emotional and physical is just too much to bear and I beg them to stick their hand up, however falteringly, and say Us, us too............ ALL are welcome at this meeting, carers, patients, curious, ........... Its too late for Maura, and even now for Siobhan, but it may help someone,somewhere and surely that is enough.
Posted on: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 23:00:26 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015