The Little Girl in the Radiator: Mum Alzheimer's & Me (4 page)

I CAN’T REMEMBER exactly when the Irish
band moved in.

I do know that there were at least six of
them. There was an accordion player, at least one guitarist, a fiddle player
and a banjo player. There was also a singer called Michael, who had a beautiful
voice, according to mum. I suppose I was very grateful to the lads in those
days, for they kept her amused for hours with their foot-tapping Irish tunes,
and I know she enjoyed listening to them and singing along.

The band also kept her away from the TV, so
she didn’t get nearly as upset as she had done, and she was confident that they
would be a great source of entertainment over Christmas dinner. Even the little
girl who lived in the radiator liked the band (I think she had a thing for
Michael), and mum said it was the happiest she had ever known her.

It was the day before Christmas Eve, and the
nine of us were all getting along famously.

My decision to play along with mum’s
delusions meant that I had to participate in a practical sense, too. My mum,
being Irish, loved her cups of tea, and would never make one just for herself.
Whenever she fancied a cup she made one for each member of the band as well,
and one also for the little girl in the radiator (or, more often, a glass of
milk). There was also a cup for me. It was the same for sandwiches while I was
at work. I would often come home to find every cup and plate in the house in
use; with at least eight cold cups of tea scattered around the living room and
kitchen, a glass of milk by the radiator, and numerous plates of uneaten
sandwiches lying here and there.

When the house was crowded, as it was that
Christmas, we were going through a loaf of bread and three pints of milk every
single day, not to mention all the chocolate biscuits.

One Saturday morning I had arranged to walk
down to the pub to have a drink with my mate, Andrew. We didn’t see each other
that often, but it was nice to have a pint together now and then and catch up.
I took the last of the cash I had in the house, around £30 I think, and began
to walk down the road. I left mum in the house listening to
I’ll Take You
Home Again Kathleen
(sung so beautifully by Michael that mum was almost in
tears), and went to meet Andrew. On the way to the pub I called into Harry’s
for a packet of cigarettes.

Harry’s was a small corner shop where you
could buy just about anything, about halfway between our house and the nearest
pub. Harry was an Indian chap who had been running the place for as long as
anyone in the area could remember, and he knew every single one of his customers
by name, knew who they were related to, knew what they liked and didn’t like,
and was always ready with a smile and a joke for anyone who entered his little
shop. With Harry, you got such a personal service that everyone went to him,
but despite this he was fighting a defensive battle against the advance of the
giant supermarkets.

‘Hi, Martin!’ he called as I entered his
shop, the familiar little brass bell tinkling over my head.

He reached behind him for my brand of
cigarettes.

‘Hi, Harry,’ I said.

I put my hand in my pocket to pay for the
smokes.

‘That’s £58.60 please, Martin,’ he said,
handing over the packet of 20 cigarettes.

I looked at him as though he had just gone
mad.

‘You what?’ I gasped.

‘Your mum was in here yesterday,’ explained
Harry. ‘She took all the chocolate biscuits I had. She cleaned me out. Fifty
packets! Then she just walked out. I didn’t want to say anything, because I
know she’s not been herself lately, and because I knew you’d be in in a couple
of days.’

‘Didn’t you think that 50 packets of
chocolate biscuits was a bit excessive, Harry?’ I asked, slapping my last £30
down on the counter, my pint with Andrew receding from view.

‘Well, I suppose so,’ he admitted, ‘but it’s
not really up to me to tell people what they can, and can’t buy, is it?’

‘That’s all I have at the moment,’ I said,
indicating the notes.

Harry picked it up. ‘No problem, we can
settle up next time,’ he said, smiling. ‘How did it go anyway, Martin?’

‘How did what go?’ I asked.

‘How did the concert go? Your mum said you
had a band over from Dublin at the house, and they were giving a concert,
traditional Irish music, lovely. Your mum said the chocolate biscuits were for
the interval. So how did the concert go?’

I think my mouth fell open somewhere about
now. I sighed. I was getting good at sighing.

‘The concert was great, thanks Harry,’ I
replied, and walked out.

Outside the shop I called Andrew. He laughed
that much I thought he was going to wet his pants.

‘Come on down anyway,’ he said, ‘I’ll buy
you a pint.’

I sat with Andrew that afternoon, we had a
few beers, we talked and laughed. It did me the world of good. I loved my mum,
and I felt privileged in a way to look after her, but it was very physically
and mentally draining. It’s a hard thing to admit, but sometimes I just needed
to get away from her. I needed to be able to relax, and to talk to someone who
lived in the same world that I did. I don’t suppose for a moment Andrew knew
how grateful I was for his company, and we would have both been embarrassed if
I had told him, but I guess that’s what mates are for.

* * * * *

As we sat and sipped, my mobile phone
rang. It was Wendy, my ex-wife.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Your mum’s just turned up
here… She’s lost and confused. Can you come and collect her? Quick as you can,
because we’re all supposed to be going out.’

I sighed. I shook hands with Andrew,
explained the situation, thanked him for his generosity, and left.

A few minutes later my mobile rang a second
time. It was Wendy again.

‘Hi, are you coming? We’re waiting to go
out!’

‘Yes, I’m coming. I haven’t got the car, I’m
walking down,’ I said.

‘Well, quick as you can then.’

The line went dead.

The unseen tentacles of Alzheimer’s reach
out in all directions at once, spreading like the underground roots of a great
tree, entwining themselves in every aspect of dozens of lives. No family member
can be left untouched; here they had cut short my one afternoon in the pub,
even when my mother wasn’t there, and were affecting my ex-wife and our
children.

I knocked on the door of the house where I
had once lived.

‘Hi,’ said Wendy, opening it. She had her
coat on. ‘Sorry about rushing you like this, but we have to get into town. She
just turned up a few minutes ago.’

‘No problem,’ I said, as I moved past her
and into the lounge.

Rebecca and Daniel, my children, were
standing with their coats on.

‘Hi dad,’ they said together.

‘Hi both,’ I replied. ‘Sorry this is such a
short visit, but I know you’re trying to get out.’

Daniel shrugged his shoulders, ‘No worries,’
he said, with a big grin on his face.

‘Come on, mum,’ I said, ‘we have to get you
home.’

‘I haven’t finished my tea yet,’ replied
mum, putting down the cup and saucer.

‘I’ll make you another cup when we get
home,’ I replied. ‘Wendy and Rebecca and Daniel are waiting to go into town.’

‘Well, I’m not stopping them!’ replied mum.

I held her coat for her: she put her arm
into the wrong sleeve.

‘Are we all going into town together?’ she
asked, trying to pull the other arm into the pocket instead of the sleeve,
failing and trying again by moving around in a circle, like a dog chasing its
tail. She failed again and moved around a bit more. We started to move around
in circles together. Wendy began to sigh about then, I think. Rebecca looked at
the ceiling and Daniel started to laugh.

‘Come here,’ said Wendy trying to help, and
then the kids joined in. The five of us were all moving around in a slow,
unwieldy circle as mum, in the middle of all this, thrashed about trying to get
her coat on. Eventually the task was completed somehow and we moved out to the
street.

Mum and I waved goodbye and began to walk
home.

‘You can’t keep turning up there uninvited
like this mum,’ I said. ‘That’s the fourth time this week.’

‘So what?’ she said, indignantly. ‘It’s my
house.’

‘It isn’t your house!’ I exclaimed. ‘It’s
Wendy’s house, and you don’t live there.’

‘I
used
to live there,’ she said.

‘You’ve never lived there! Wendy and your
grandchildren live there.’

‘Where do I live, then?’ said mum.

This is where I began to sigh again.

‘You live with me at your own house.’

She seemed to be reflecting on this as we
walked along. After a few minutes of uninterrupted silence, she suddenly asked:
‘What does it look like?’

By then I had forgotten what we had been
talking about.

‘What does what look like?’ I replied, puzzled.

‘My house.’

Our conversations were often like this. I
thought again about what the consultant had said back in 2002, about the rug of
her memories being rolled up. That consultation seemed like a lifetime ago now.
It struck me that a lot of what we are, and who we are, is the fabric of
memories we carry around with us. Knowledge of our past roots us in our
present, giving us focus in the current moment. When that knowledge becomes
distorted or confused our roots wither, and our understanding of our own selves
becomes destabilised. When that happens all the cushions disappear, and the
world must seem a very harsh and uncertain place indeed.

‘It’s a lovely house,’ I replied, ‘it’s
where the Irish band plays, and the little girl in the radiator lives, remember?’

‘Ah yes, I remember now,’ said mum. ‘But
that’s not my house.’

‘Yes it is.’

‘I don’t remember ever buying that house.’

‘You bought it with dad, years ago.’

We walked on again in silence for a while.

A policeman and policewoman were walking
slowly towards us. When the four of us were just about to pass mum spoke to the
policewoman.

‘Hello!’ said mum, as though she had known
the officer all her life. ‘Is your mother better now?’

The policewoman looked at mum, obviously
trying to recall who she was.

‘I must tell you this story about me and
your mum,’ continued my mother. ‘One day when Benny and Frank had gone out for
a drink, your mum and me were looking after Richard. He was very naughty when
he was small, wasn’t he?’

The policewoman looked at me.

‘She has Alzheimer’s,’ I said, softly.

The two officers nodded.

‘Anyway,’ resumed mum, ‘Richard wasn’t let
out because he was so naughty, and me and your mother…’

The story went on and on for at least the
next 15 minutes. The two police officers paid attention to mum, and smiled and
nodded in all the right places. I liked them both for that. As mum pressed on
with her story, the policeman moved around to my side.

‘Is she all right?’ he whispered.

‘She’s my mum,’ I replied quietly. ‘She’s
been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Do you know what that is?’

He nodded. ‘I’ve seen it before. My
grandfather thought there was a lake in his bedroom, he used to go fishing up
there.’

The officer said this so matter-of-factly
that I began to wonder just how widespread Alzheimer’s was amongst the elderly
population. I began to do some basic research after that, and the findings left
me dumbstruck.

‘Well, we must be going, now,’ said mum.
‘Give my love to your mother.’

‘I will,’ replied the policewoman, smiling.

‘Her mother was very funny,’ said mum as we
walked on down the street.

I wondered: had she known the woman? She’d
certainly spoken of her with firm conviction, and it was infectious. I doubted
it, but I wasn’t sure. Any onlooker would certainly have believed that the two
women really were old friends.

‘You told the little girl in the radiator I
said she could come out, didn’t you?’ I asked, after a while.

‘Yes, I did,’ replied mum, nodding her head
with conviction.

‘What did she say?’

Mum shook her head. ‘She said it isn’t as
easy as that.’

WHEN MUM HAD gone to bed on Christmas Eve,
I ventured out into the back garden to take a look at Godzilla the Goose. I
checked its flesh for small bites and claw marks: there were none. I lifted it
up and smelled it; as far as I could tell, the meat had not gone off.

I admit I had terrible misgivings about
cooking the thing after it had been sitting in the garden all that time, but
what with one thing and another I hadn’t got around to replacing it with a
normal turkey so it was Godzilla or nothing. I dragged it off the garden chair,
and carried it over my shoulder, like a wounded soldier, back into the house.
It needed to be washed thoroughly, and as it was too big to fit into the
kitchen sink I gave it a bath. It lay there like a well-behaved child as I
washed it down and dried it with a towel. Then I dragged it back into the
kitchen. I had searched the internet for a good recipe for cooking goose, and
had managed to find a tray large enough for the damn thing to lie on. For the
next hour or so I prepared the monster for a very slow overnight cook. I would
roast it raised on a drip tray; underneath I would put potatoes, carrots and
parsnips, which would baste in the dripping fat.

This seemed like a splendid plan, until I
raised the prepared carcass up to the oven and realised it wouldn’t go through
the door.

‘Oh, bollocks!’

I slammed the giant bird back down onto the
kitchen table. In a temper I went to get dad’s saw from the garage. There
wasn’t too much rust on the blade, I thought, so I began the bloody
dismemberment of mum’s monster goose.

‘Why the hell couldn’t she just buy a normal
turkey like anybody else?’ I said to myself as I hacked through bone and sinew,
tossing the discarded pieces, one after the other into the pan.

At last it was dissected into around six
pieces, and I put the whole contraption into the oven on a low heat. I had a
few presents to wrap, and to place under the Christmas tree before I fell into
bed, exhausted.

The next morning at breakfast, mum asked me
the same question she had asked me every day for the past month.

‘Is it Christmas yet?’

‘Yes, it is!’ I said. ‘Happy Christmas,
mum.’

She gave a girlish squeal of delight and
clapped her hands.

‘Can we open our presents now?’ she said.

We went to the tree. She unwrapped a woollen
cardigan I had bought her. She put it on and kissed me.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘Thank you very
much.’

I gave her a gift from Peggy. Her sister had
been dead for five years, but mum still talked to her all the time so I
reasoned that the least she could do was buy mum a Christmas present. It was a
leather handbag I had seen in town.

‘Oh, she shouldn’t have spent so much
money,’ said mum, ‘but Peggy always did give lovely presents.’

‘Aunt Peggy will be glad you like it,’ I
said.

‘What have you got?’ asked mum. ‘I didn’t
buy any presents. I’m sorry.’

She looked very sad, and embarrassed.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t safe to allow her out on her own, so she hadn’t had
any opportunity to get me anything; I’d known she would become angry with
herself over this, thinking that she had forgotten, and that that would have
made her even more upset and confused.

‘Yes, you did,’ I said. ‘This one’s to me,
from you.’

I carefully unwrapped a pair of my old
trousers which I had taken out of my wardrobe and wrapped up for myself the
previous night.

‘Gee, thanks mum,’ I said, and kissed her.
‘They’re great!’

‘I hope you like them,’ said mum. ‘I hope
they fit.’

‘Sure they will,’ I replied, and, being as
I’d been wearing them only two days earlier, it was a pretty safe bet.

I also knew by then that Alzheimer’s has a
funny way of filling up the blanks in a sufferer’s memory. I only had to act as
though the present was from her to me, to let her see me unwrap it, and her
mind would colour in the missing memory of her buying it for me.

‘It took me a long time to find those
trousers for you,’ she said. ‘The man in the shop said they were a very good
quality pair.’

‘Yes, they are, mum,’ I said. ‘Thanks a
lot.’

I also had a nice shirt from her. Mum was
happy; she hadn’t forgotten her Christmas shopping, after all.

‘Why don’t you go and watch the telly, and
I’ll check on the dinner?’ I said.

The dismembered goose seemed to be doing
fine. Its sojourn in the garden didn’t seem to have had a detrimental effect on
the meat at all, and neither had its being carved up with a rusty saw. For all
of the unconventionality of that Christmas, our last one together, it was going
to be okay.

The smell of roast goose filled the little
bungalow, and mum asked if she could lay out the table.

‘That’s a good idea,’ I replied.

We didn’t have a dining room, and our
kitchen table would only seat four people. Mum shook her head, firmly; that
wouldn’t be big enough, she said. So she started to lay out places all around
the house. Knives, forks and spoons were placed on the television, on top of
each radiator, on the kitchen worktops, on the seat of each armchair – in fact,
on any flat and level surface in the house that was more than a few inches
wide. It seemed the Irish band and the little girl in the radiator would be
joining us, too.

‘You can’t leave people out when they’re in
the house,’ whispered mum. ‘That would be so
rude
.’

‘Is the little girl in the radiator going to
come out to eat her dinner, then?’ I asked, wondering how she would handle that
one.

‘She might be able to,’ replied mum, ‘but
she’ll have to go back in as soon as she’s had her meal.’

‘I thought she couldn’t get out?’ I said.

Mum thought for a moment. ‘No, she can’t,’
she said. ‘I suppose she’ll just have to eat her dinner in there.’

I busied myself with the rest of the
paraphernalia which traditionally goes with Christmas dinner, and mum watched
television. At the back of my mind I was still worried about the recent history
of the goose, and the possibility of food poisoning – especially since I was
supposed to be looking after her – but it was too late to abandon it all and go
out to a restaurant instead. Then I had an idea. For years, a ginger cat who
lived locally had come into our back garden to play and hide in the bushes. He
visited my parent’s bungalow at least twice a week, and my dad had made a pal
of him by giving him fresh fish on a Friday – my parents being traditional
Catholics, they usually ate fish on Fridays. The old tom was in the garden
right now, as luck would have it. I cut a nice slice of the hot goose flesh and
carried it to the back door. The cat saw me immediately. I threw the meat to a
spot about a foot in front of where he was sitting.

If the meat was poisoned, surely the cat
would know it, and not eat it? If he rejected the goose, I reasoned, so would
we. The cat sniffed the air, and cautiously moved forwards. I watched with
baited breath as he sniffed the meat again, and then started to eat it. Once he
was done, he stood up, now very alert, and licked his lips; I think I licked
mine. I threw him another piece (we had plenty to spare), and he pounced on it
straight away. I felt easier in my mind, then – though, fleetingly, I wondered
whether I should really be placing all of my trust in him. What if he wasn’t as
smart as I was giving him credit for? Then we’d all be ill. I dismissed these
worries with the same reckless attitude with which an alcoholic ignores a final
demand letter from his landlord.
It’ll be all right
, I thought, and set
about the goose. It was time to dish up.

Mum insisted our ‘guests’ were well fed, and
went around the house putting healthy amounts of goose on each plate. When she
was finished there were a few slices and a leg each for ourselves: they were so
big they looked like they had belonged to a professional sprinter. Then we sat
down to that little kitchen table and quietly ate our last Christmas dinner
together, she in her own little world and me in mine. We were two people in a
bubble which excluded the rest of humanity; and within that was another bubble
which contained only my mother. Alzheimer’s is the ultimate isolation, the last
and greatest loneliness. There we sat, the invalid and the carer, the prisoner
and the jailer. She was blithely unaware of these thoughts, which were perhaps
slightly maudlin; in fact, I couldn’t remember seeing her so happy since my
father had died.

As we ate, I pondered; I’d had a chat with
Mary next door earlier in the week. She’d been adamant that it was time to think
about finding a home for mum; maybe she was right? I was certainly struggling
to cope on my own. I was an only child, with no brothers or sisters to share
the load and the responsibility; my surviving aunts and uncles all lived in Ireland. There was no-one else.

I hated the idea of packing her off, and put
it to the back of my mind.

‘This turkey is lovely,’ observed mum,
breaking the silence, ‘but it’s a bit more greasy than usual.’

Probably because it’s a goose, I thought.

‘Peggy never ate enough green vegetables,’
said mum. ‘Me mammy is always telling her. Did you know there’s iron in
vegetables?’

‘No, I didn’t know that, mum.’

‘Me mammy told me that only yesterday.’

My grandmother died 40 years ago.

‘Me mammy said, You’ll always be healthy,
Rose, if you eat your green vegetables.’

There was a brief silence, during which I
digested this.

Then mum spoke again. ‘Did I ever tell you
that there’s iron in green vegetables?’

‘No, I never heard that before.’

‘Me mammy told me that.’

‘Does the little girl in the radiator like
her dinner?’ I asked, changing the subject; the conversation was likely to go
around and around in circles, otherwise, with me being told that there was iron
in vegetables over and over again for the rest of the afternoon.

(A few weeks previously, mum had told me a
joke, and had laughed as she told the story. A few minutes later she had
forgotten that she had just told me the joke and so she told it to me again.
Because she had forgotten she had previously said it, it was just as funny to
her the second time. A few minutes later she had forgotten she had just told it
twice, and so she told me the same joke, word for word again, and again she had
laughed all the way to the punchline because she had forgotten she had already
said it twice. Each time she told it, only a few minutes apart, it was as fresh
and as funny to her as it had been the first time. The effect on the listener
is, of course, somewhat different. The first time you laugh because it’s a
funny joke; the second time you laugh because they laugh, and that’s
infectious. The third time you laugh because the situation is so mad. The
fourth time it starts to get scary. By the tenth time you want to leap out of
the window to get away.)

‘She says it’s the nicest Christmas dinner
she’s ever had,’ replied mum.

We served the traditional plum duff pudding
after the meal, giving smallish portions to the band and the little girl in the
radiator.

‘They all said they didn’t want a large
helping, mum,’ I said.

After dinner we cleaned all nine of the
plates away from around the house and washed up. I went to turn the telly on –
there was some film or other on I’d thought we could watch – but mum held up a
hand.

‘The band are going to play a few tunes for
us,’ she said.

So I sat back down, and watched while she
moved her leg in time to the music in her mind, smiling and remembering and
nodding her head all the way through the recital. Perhaps the songs she was
listening to were those she and my dad had danced to all those years ago in Dublin – I remembered him telling me how he and mum had first met at a dance hall in the
city. There was certainly a rare bliss on my mother’s face that Christmas
afternoon, as Michael and the rest of his imaginary band transported her back
five decades to another time and another place – to a polished parquet dance
floor, and she was a young girl again, with all of her life stretching out
before her like an uncharted ocean.

I wondered how a healthy mind and spirit
could ever come to this.