I have occasionally written of the spiral curriculum that is porcelain. As your skill grows in one area it points up deficiencies in another so you tweak that and a third becomes noticeable and so on. As you learn you follow an upward spiral of ascending ability in all areas. I believe that many things in life that are worth doing follow this pattern.
Dementia is the same except that the spiral is downward and at present it seems to be more of a flat circle, largely due to the stabilising influence of the carers. In this case a flat circle is more desirable than a downward plunge.
Last evening my mother rang shortly after seven to insist she was dying, I had better pack my suitcase, look to it, don’t argue, why didn’t I just pack up and go and so on. She did so with remarkable vigour for one at death’s door, so, whilst I sympathised with her feeling poorly –‘Poorly! Poorly! I’m ill and may not survive the night I’ll have you know, and another thing, what do these useless carers, Carers! I’ll give them carers!………’ You get the general idea. Other than the tone of the communication and the exact words it mirrored the communication my other half had been unlucky enough to intercept the previous evening when I was at a meeting.
The phone call reminded me powerfully of the phone call from hospital last year on my birthday, when she was going to skin me alive if I didn’t immediately get a taxi to go and collect her. That left me shaking; now, I’m getting used to it.
I think she has reached a phase where her deterioration means that she is much more tired (and fractious, but I have an inkling you may have guessed that) in the evenings. So I did not dash upstairs and pack a suitcase, partly because I don’t need to, it’s been packed for months and partly because the main aim of this bit of her illness is definitely not to get drawn into the insanity. I realised that if I hop in the car and pop down there, with suitcase, other baggage, suitably attired and bandbox fresh, a process which I have got down to two hours thought to door, when she so desires, I’ll be doing nothing but that for the rest of her life.
So, instead, I cleared up the porcelain I’ve been pouring, though I did not put it away completely, I set my hair and dried it and then went to bed. I wish I had had a good night’s sleep but I didn’t. Logic suggested she was being demented, a lifetime of being dictated to suggested I should get my ass down there pronto or be sorry later.
In the morning I rang the agency first. They rang the carer on her mobile and for lo! My mother was sitting at the dining table enjoying a hearty breakfast without a care in the world. I rang her. Yes she remembered last night, yes she was dying, why wasn’t I there? She was only managing to struggle through a cup of tea. What, I enquired, of the two toasted brioche the carer had brought her? I understood she had polished them off. Let us, she vouchsafed, not speak of them, she was still excessively ill and, in an aside to the carer, more tea, pour the dregs down the sink and I’ll have it properly hot this time and need to see the shade of it myself, yes Jane I am dying and will speak to you later.
From beyond the grave? I fancy not.
This dance which goes round in a circle could be remarkably long lasting. The clue to not getting worn out by it is to trust the professionals. ‘Oh yes,’ opined the deputy head carer, on her mobile, ‘that’s behaviour that is, definitely demented. We’ll write it in the book.’
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