Watching a journey into dementia is a fairly slow process.
Some of it is funny in the way of that classic ABC TV series Mother and Son but most of it is sad. We know how dementia ends.
We knew that the elderly ethnic woman never wanted to come to Australia — she said so often enough. We also assumed she had made some sort of peace with it, as most immigrants do. Now it appears that the past five or so decades have made very little impression on her mind and memory.
That vast space of time where most of her life happened is only a thin and crumbling veneer over the rock-solid reality of her first three decades back home.
In an effort to make sense of her confusion, she clings to her routines and will fight anyone who dares usurp her authority.
‘‘You can’t boss me around in my house and you can leave right now,’’ is a standard response to any perceived interference.
The Meals on Wheels people got short shrift on day two. ‘‘You can’t come in. I don’t want your food. I can cook for myself.’’
Cooking these days is a six pack of sausages straight from the freezer, boiled for half an hour and eaten with tomato sauce.
Unless, there is pizza.
For all her protection of the turf she has owned for more than 50 years, the old lady insists she doesn’t actually live here.
‘‘How should I know? I arrived three days ago,’’ is the usual response to fairly basic questions. ‘‘Where’s the coffee pot, mum?’’
That’s how you start your visit — a visit that is too long and not long enough irrespective of how long you intend to stay.
‘‘Those people who lived in this house when I was away must have taken it,’’ she says. ‘‘When I came back the other day, they left through the back door and probably took the coffee pot with them. I don’t know who they were, they just said hello and left.’’
But where had you been when you were not here? She looks at you like you are the crazy one. ‘‘I was at home of course, in my own house in my village.’’
So you look for the coffee pot in all the likely and unlikely places and find it an hour later in the wardrobe in the back room behind a stack of ice cream containers. In the morning, there is frost on the grass and the sun is shining. She is eating Anzac biscuits.
‘‘I’m glad you are up,’’ she says. ‘‘You can drive me home now.’’ You haven’t had breakfast yet, so you are a bit irritable.
‘‘Your village is across the ocean and you would have to sit an an aeroplane for two days to get there, so don’t be so ridiculous.’’
She arches up: ‘‘Across the ocean! You think I am stupid,’’ she yells in the voice that made you run for the hills as a child. I come and go all the time and I’ve never seen any water.’’ There is silence while she chews on another biscuit.
‘‘Well, if you won’t drive me, I’ll ring my son.’’
You tell her that she can’t call him at the moment because he is on holidays. The biscuits and the medication must be starting to take effect because she takes on a reasonable tone.
Looking out the window at the frost, she tells you how lucky we are to be living in Australia. ‘‘At home, there would be snow as high as the window and I would be outside shovelling it off the footpath so people could get to the railway station,’’ she says.
You try to reinforce the advantages of Australia but she has taken on an absent look, probably gone to shovel snow in a European winter.
On the way to the supermarket she returns briefly from what is now her real life in post World War II Europe to pass comment on cars in the car park.
‘‘So many cars. I have never seen so many cars. We don’t have many cars back home.’’
The next morning, the scene more or less repeats itself. There is an empty pizza box on the table. She is dialling the phone while chewing on the last bit of capricciosa.
‘‘What are you doing?’’ you say. ‘‘I am calling my son so he can drive me home today,’’ she says quite reasonably. And this time I am not coming back — this has been my last visit to this house.’’
Taking your cue from the pizza box, you tell her that if she goes home she won’t be able to enjoy pizza with her grandchildren as she did last night. (Pizza is now her favourite food but it is not available in the village).
She puts the phone down and thinks for a bit. You get the impression she is carefully weighing up her options but the pull of home is stronger than grandchildren and pizza.
‘‘Oh well’’, she says. ''I’ve got land over there you know and with spring coming, it will have to be ploughed. Someone’s got to look after the land.’’
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Have you lived with or cared for someone with dementia?