‘I know now I’ll never go away.’ I was sitting with Anna after breakfast and she was distressed. ‘We can go places,’ I said.
‘You can I can’t.’
And then she asked again: ‘What is so awful about that place?’ She meant Greece, I know. It was easy for me to guess that. And I explained again about the difficulty we would have in travelling there. She obviously thought I was not trying hard enough: ‘You’re a big man.’ Yes, and if I could carry her, I would. But she was not impressed. ‘I’ll find someone to go with me. I’ll have to find somebody else.’ It is as if I have failed her as a husband.
But then her independence left her. ‘I’ll go to the toilet – [pause] – I don’t know how to do it.’
Later she was angry again. ‘You hate me, don’t you.’
I offered her something for her headache. ‘You just want to get me out of it.’
Then she tried to explain about something really good. She stood and waved her arms … ‘Green things, up there.’ I could not understand and she got more angry at my stupidity. She gestured about something that went round and round. I tried to find out if she was talking about food or clothes, or flowers in the garden, perhaps the rose bushes.
‘Don’t do this to me.’ She was really frustrated now. She explained again: ‘Boys like it.’ Her arms waving again, , she gripped my hand with sudden force. ‘It’s up there.’
Eventually – and this was after an hour or more - I thought she said, lights? and I guessed, Christmas trees, and that was right I think, Anna looked relieved and became calm, though by then I don’t think she remembered what she had started out to explain. And why she would talk about a Christmas tree at the beginning of summer I was not to know.
I am of the generation that read R.D Lang in the 60’s. Lang listened to the sense of what people said, and took what they said seriously, even though they had a diagnosis of schizophrenia and were talking like they were quite mad. How to listen to someone with dementia? The sense is there but the associations are wild and the gaps between the words get wider and wider.
There is someone - I forget the name, anyone know? – who has written poetry from conversations with people with dementia. Psychoanalysts and others listen to the music behind the words. In Tavistock group relations conferences some people do well with understanding what is going on, when they are unfamiliar with the language being spoken.
If I had thought of a Christmas tree earlier, it would have saved an hour of mental pain. This is more difficult than Sudoku. ‘It gets to my top,’ she said., meaning her headache. ‘I’m frightened I’ll have no brain or something.’