‘I’m not an invalid,’ she says. My father was the same, and felt insulted when someone suggested that he might claim invalidity benefit.
You won’t get in to a football game if your ticket is invalid. Or a country if your passport is invalid. It is as if you are excluded, without appeal, condemned to stay outside, a non-person without the ordinary rights of a citizen.
‘I’m not a baby.’ But then she said, ‘but it’s getting more like that.’
Invalid or baby, the choices are not attractive ones.
‘I’m not stupid. You think I’m stupid. I’m stupid.’ That’s a third possibility.
All these accusations that she feels are being made against her – and by her – are because she is dependent on others for help.
’We all need help,’ I say, in a bland nonsensical attempt to be reassuring.
But we are facing a real problem here, the perception that dependency is bad. Stories about how Prince Charles has his toothpaste squeezed by a manservant somehow don’t convince us that it’s all right to have other people attend to our needs.
Slowly Anna is coming round to accepting some aspects of her dependency - so that I have now found that it is possible to feed her by myself putting the spoon to her mouth (this is new). And this way she is eating better. She may at any time reject her dependency and the spoon will go flying.
The big experiment is with the wheelchair. Everyone wants her to use it. Joanna, who is with her in the afternoons, wants to take her to the shops. The chair has been under wraps under the stairs. But then Anna got stuck in the kitchen, and I got out the chair and she sat in it. It was a small victory – or defeat. And now that the path is ramped to the pavement, Daisy and I were able to use the chair to get Anna to the car today, when we were going out to the country. It made possible what was becoming impossible.
My dad didn't like being an invalid but he loved his wheelchair.
But every victory like this really is a defeat. I am lifting Anna over thresholds several times a day like a newlywed husband who can’t get enough of it. And each time I know that she is losing the ability to stand on her own two feet.
Dependency is bad, it’s in our genes.