Cautiously, I negotiate the jeep through the narrow stone-walled entrance to the nursing home. My heart sinks and that band of steel clamps around my chest, pressing and tightening, leaving me short of breath, and my pulse races. I can already feel the dampness on my palms and I realise these visits are becoming more and more difficult.
I notice how I try to avoid coming, sometimes even missing a morning by giving myself an excuse. The truth is uncomfortable and confronting. I can no longer bear to witness my father slide into this world of suspended life.
They call it the "living death" but I cannot accept this description of Alzheimer's because I want to believe I can talk to my Dad and he is able to hear me and on some level is grasping our conversation and is interacting with me, however inappropriate his words may be. This is the lifeline between us. This is Dad, a phenomenon of my life operating from both sides of his now tangled brain, a truly whole person. He painted in oils and water-colours duplicating nature's existence on his canvas. He even dabbled in a touch of Impressionism when he freed his mind of the exacting art of replication. A tree became a series of blotches shot through with light and dark hues of colour. Skies were depicted in fading margins of greys, blues and cloud whites merging together. He could craft beautiful wooden models, presenting grandchildren with replicas of their homes or cars scaled down for play.
These precise artistic abilities reflected the strong mathematical and analytical power of the other side of his brain. He was professionally a mathematician, lecturing at degree level to like-minded scholars, grappling with theorems and proofs, laws and dynamics.
His language was one of equations, of numbers mixed with letters and impossibles in order to describe relationships between lines and angles, curves and slopes. Now the equation we deal with is the developing plaques, coupled with enlarging ventricles in his grey matter, that have a proven and undeniable end result.
More than his talents is his capacity to love and give. He was totally dedicated to my mother throughout her traumatic life of change and insecurity. He remained the constant strength at her side. It was this strength I felt as a child when this hero of mine carried me, shoulder-high, back from the dentist. As my jaw throbbed sore and my mouth felt stale with blood, he sang army favourites, distracting and calming me. Once I saw him weeping beside the telephone, his stature crumpled and defeated and I put my tiny arm around his neck giving back to him some of that comfort as I so often do now on my visits.
As I turn into his room I stand at the door. "Hello Daddy. I've just popped in to see you." I make an effort to let the words trip lightly off my tongue so he will not pick up the wave of sadness which washes over me.
His arms flail through the air as if to catch my voice and he responds as always in total astonishment. "Well bless my soul. How did you manage that?" After this we interact on a level which any passer-by would find hard to make any sense of. Dad juxtaposing words which have no place together, prodding the air with his index finger, using intonations which often are my only clue to whether he is asking a question or making a statement and I reply as if there is absolutely nothing wrong. This is the lifeline and as Dad sinks further into the depths of confusion and isolation, I feel it is stretched to a gossamer thin thread.
Today is Alzheimer National Tea Day. For information phone 01-2846616
