Don`t forget me....

I write about loads of stuff on this blog. Family, friends, gin, chocolate, my dancing daughters, being an extra on the telly,running (really badly...) and my passion for travelling anywhere really...Trafalgar Square,Times Square, Rome, Marbella, Normandy (Nice is next ;)  ) 

Life is sweet, pretty much. And in the mix, is my Dad, who has Alzheimer`s. By chance, I`ll be with him on Saturday September 21st...World Alzheimer`s Day, so his partner/carer can get a much deserved day out. So here`s one I prepared earlier, with apologies to you if you`ve read it before. A piece about a trip to Kent six months ago. I`m driving through the night again in a few hours because I hate M25 jams....then I`ll sleep for a few hours and wake in time for breakfast with dad. So here it is....(Merry Alzheimer`s Day...!) If you also love someone who has this devastating condition, could you retweet this for me or pass it on another way? I hope you see those glimmers of hope and light today, too.


It was good seeing him.

I got there at lunchtime, armed with a promised picnic of treats. He was in his usual chair, angled, as ever, towards the television, glancing over, even though the screen was off.

Once a broad shouldered six footer, he`s frail now, so doesn`t tend to get up for visitors. But he returned my hug, kiss and smile and his eyes had that welcoming twinkle of recognition.

`Wasn`t too bad today on the motorway,` I ventured. `About four hours`.

`Oh?` said my dad; unwittingly about to deliver a low blow.`Where from ?`

And that`s how it is when someone you love so dearly, has dementia. It`s a slow decline, but you cling on to crumbs of comfort; feeling secure that they still know you. And they do, really. They just can`t be sure, any more,where you live.

I don`t know how he feels. But I sometimes imagine a huge jigsaw. As you grow from childhood to your adult years, more pieces are added. People, places, experiences.There are the really key segments; your family, your partner, your home. Stick them in the centre somewhere. Further out, holiday shots, pictures of the homes your children move to when they grow and leave; pieces showing the smiling faces of your grandchildren.

Then maybe, as the Alzheimer`s develops, it`s as if the pieces get removed, one by one.

Lunch came and went. Sandwiches, sausages, little pork pies, a box of profiteroles; coffee. The plates were cleared but dad`s padded lap tray stayed in position as I chatted with Phyllis, his partner. He didn`t really join in. He looked up often, towards the telly, but nothing doing there. He gazed back down repeatedly at the picture on his tray--some kind of farmyard scene.

My heart sank again, as I realised he was tapping his finger against the detail in the picture in front of him.

After about 15 minutes, and during a gap in the conversation, he looked up.

`Four`, he said, quite assertively, eyes bright, with almost child-like pride. `There are FOUR dogs in this picture`.

This is how it must be, I thought. To lose your mind. And that`s when it hits you. That the fog of dementia is becoming more dense; slowing everything down.

And here...is when it lifts you: when a shaft of light pierces through the fog. When you find that spark, that memory or talking point from many, many years before, that cranks the memory back into action.

It was one we often return to. The Harrow and Wealdstone train crash of 1952, which claimed 112 lives. Back in the mix because Phyllis had talked about a local historian`s interest in the event, and in dad`s involvement. As I`ve mentioned in an earlier blog post, dad was a young PC on duty at the time, helping casualties. They put his picture, grim faced, traumatised, in the evening paper that night.

Bizarrely, this grim story became the shaft of light on this gloomy day. It put dad centre stage again, feeling a more adult pride this time, reliving the hours spent crawling under mangled carriages, part of the team heaving up the wreckage up to free victims, crawling into the tightest spaces to offer assurances and shots of morphine to the trapped.

`I could do it`, said my dad, who`d been digging coal at 14. `Just like those mines, see? Lying on your side. Squeezing along the tunnels. Squeezing under that train.`

Sixty years before.The darkest memories. The utmost clarity.

Two days later I came home and read the excellent blog by Duncan Jones, (www.shesstillmymum.wordpress.com ).

His mum also has dementia, and he writes movingly about her decline, and the expected, but dreaded moment Duncan reached recently--suspecting, for the first time, that his mum didn`t really know who he was. Heartbreaking. And a moment you never want to experience.

I always feel I`m a few steps behind Duncan, but walking along the same route. Looking for those shafts of light in every conversation. Always wanting that twinkle of recognition in their eyes...

Comments on Twitter:

Carole Youngs ‏@Smallholder

@janemcintyre12 Thank you for writing about your Dad; I lost my Mum to Alzheimer's - the longest goodbye.

Michelle ‏@MlleSorbet

Beautifully written & very moving > RT @janemcintyre12: OK it`s dementia. But don`t forget me... http://lovemymondays.blogspot.co.uk 

Coverage Care and 5 others retweeted you

21 hrs:

It`s dementia. But don`t forget me.... http://lovemymondays.blogspot.com/2013/03/dont-forget-me.html?spref=tw …

     

Teach...your children well....

......remember the song? OK, if you`re too young, you might have seen it on the BBC`s `70s series. Appropriate really, as there`s been a fair bit in the press about what makes a good teacher,and about getting more students to become one. Even encouraging more sixth formers to go into schools, and see what it`s like on the other side of the desk.

I guess you`d be more inclined to consider it as a career if you`ve got happy memories about the staff in your school. Happiest days of your life? Well they can be. But a `bad` teacher can knock your confidence for life, too, can`t they?

Years ago Dad used to talk about getting the `strap` across his hand for misdemeanours as a young pupil in Musselburgh. He could still recall the sting of the leather across his outstretched palm. That`s what you did with `unruly` pupils in those days.

In my first term at infants` school in Ealing, I remember being made to stand in a corner for half an hour with my back to the class. The heinous crime that I`d committed was `swishing my hands across the desk`, and then trying to make my best friend Rosalyn do the same. I was four, but even then, I knew it was a fair cop, and served my time with not even a glance over my shoulder.

I might have hated Mrs Jeffries for life after that, but she made me Mary in the school nativity that year, and I got to ride on a push along donkey with a cushion up my dress.

Years later in Kent, I can remember English teachers in my secondary school inspiring me with their encouraging words in the margins of my exercise books. That always felt good. I loved English, and have Miss Rhys-Jones to thank for my pronounced pedantry over punctuation. (And alliteration; clearly.)

But I loathed my art teacher when she kept me back after class one day `for a word`. She studied me, from top to toe (yeah..I was pretty sure she didn`t want to paint me....)...taking in my unruly blonde hair, brightened only that weekend with a hefty application of Sun-In, the thick clumps of black mascara, and the glistening layer of roll on lip gloss (mint flavour). Down went her eyes....to the standard issue green elasticated belt, hiding a waistband rolled over several times until the bottle green box pleats covered my arse but were way, way above my knee...to the chocolate brown platforms, exactly the same as my friend Carol`s (Freeman, Hardy, Willis) and defiantly three inches higher than school rules permitted.

`I suppose you think you`re rather glamorous` she hissed.`But you`re in the fifth year.Not a fashion parade.`

 The thing was... I did feel fairly glamorous. We all did.We were fifteen, and spent at least half an hour plastering that stuff on before school. And it was an all girls`school too.

But another part of being a glamorous fifteen year old then, was smoking. At least we thought so.You couldn`t do it at home. It was tricky on the bus, in case your mum`s friend saw you. You could sometimes get away with it down at the Wimpy. But if you tried it in the school grounds, it meant immediate, non negotiable expulsion.

I hated tennis, so I took the risk, and happily signed up to the practice of `whacking the buggers as hard as you can into the woods`. Only a select few knew about this. And once enough tennis balls had been `whacked into the woods`...someone had to go and retrieve them. And because it was the `woods` and no-one apart from us knew what might be lurking there, we were allowed to take a friend. And she usually dragged a friend along too. (Safety in numbers).

What was lurking there ...stuffed in a Woolworth`s carrier bag, at the end of a large log, deep in the undergrowth, and worth the nettle stings and bramble scratches to reach them, was one glorious packet of More Menthol, and a box of matches. And their presence meant that at least four of us, in the course of double tennis, got to have a smoke. We chose menthol to hide the nicotine smell, of course, but I`m sure Miss P knew what we were up to. If she`d reported us, we`d have been marched off the premises. I always assumed even to this day, that she took pity on us because she smoked like a trooper herself .

But I`ve just realised she probably let us go because we were so completely crap at tennis.

Anyway. No detentions. No expulsions. Thanks, Miss.