We look at each other across the kitchen table, both eating breakfast and both confused. Oma is having grilled cheese on toast, although she had asked for jam, because I am reducing her sugar consumption. She went through 24 or more cans of Coke in a week — because she could in her own home. I’m on my second cup of black coffee.
Anyhow, we look at each other, both trying to work out who the other is. Oma is not always sure who I am because she has advanced dementia. I am not sure who she is because she is not whom she used to be. I stare into her bemused brown eyes and wonder who is looking back at me. Is there anyone at home, and if so, who is it?
For that matter, who is anyone when the brain does not function?
In my opinion, we relate to others for their opinions, their sense of humour, their good taste and charm or lack of, the way they present themselves, their relationship with the world around them. As far as I can work out, all those things are run by the brain.
In the guise of a spruced-up old lady — I keep her spruced up at the cost of a lot of nervous energy — Oma is a somewhat vacant container of basic needs and functions. Her social niceties are disappearing gradually as is her ability for normal conversation.
Take for example the beautifully wrapped Japanese cakes left by a visitor. There were 10 in the box, individually sealed in cellophane, each the size of a generous lemon slice you would find in an average bakery. Oma ate the lot during an afternoon (I have to start hiding things). She either has no memory of eating those cakes or her persona is now that of a child — a child who scams and lies. It wasn’t me, I never saw any cakes, she insists when I wave the empty box at her.
The workings of her mind makes me think of a tightly tangled ball of multi-coloured thread. You pull at the yellow thread only to find its knotted up with the blue and the green and the purple and you can’t pull any of them free. Sometimes it looks as if her neurons are starting to fire but before they can travel any distance, they hit a dead end or veer off into another path where they fall off a cliff.
Put your dirty clothes in the washing machine, I say, and I’ll wash them later. She does that and I shut the lid. I come home from work and the washing machine is empty and her dirty clothes are folded neatly in her room. Why? Why? Why? They were my clothes and I put them away, she says indignantly. Now I have to hide her washing unless I do it straight away.
Sometimes she looks as if she is being driven by something or someone else — a force that is separate from her. This force compels her to fold toilet paper into usable portions which she stacks neatly in various parts of the house: her suitcase, the bookshelves, on the coffee table.
There is absolutely no way in getting her to articulate what she is doing apart from a vacant ‘‘I might need it later’’.
In the late afternoons, she is like a chook wanting to roost. She paces up and down the house locking all doors and windows. Liking air — even the suspect inner-west air — I reopen them. Leave the doors open, I say, the mesh doors are locked and you are safe. But the next time she passes the back timber door, she locks it.
Her look reminds me of the dog who panics and looks for a dark place to hide when a thunderstorm is imminent. It’s as if both are driven by some sort of earth force, both impervious to words of comfort or logic. It’s as if the ‘‘body’s gotta do what the body’s gotta do’’ and the brain does not get a look in.
Whoever or whatever is driving her, I wish it would stop because it is driving me nuts.