I have started keeping a tally of things my dad has remembered and
things he has forgotten.Column 1 (Things he has remembered): A blue line on Google Maps
means traffic is good and a red line means traffic is bad. His phone
number. His hatred of the Liberal Party. How to use a brand new
microwave, fresh out of the box.
Column 2 (Things he has forgotten): My birthday. The word ‘barbeque’.
What happened this morning. The fact he has been diagnosed with
Alzheimer’s disease.
I accompany Dad to his medical appointments now, and when
I mention his diagnosis to each of his attentive doctors, Dad always
looks at me with a scrunched-up face.
“What does that mean?” he’ll ask me. “Cognitive ability? Dementia?
Am I losing my mind?”“No,” I’ll reply, patting his leg. “No, it doesn’t mean that.” I don’t
know if I’m lying or not. I try not to think about it.
“When did this happen?” Dad will press. “I don’t remember.”
And I’ll tell him the story again: we sat together, me and him and
Mum, all huddled around a computer screen at his doctor’s office.
A scan of Dad’s wrinkly brain was floating on the screen, black and
white and walnutty, and completely untethered from the rest of his body.
“See this here?” the doctor said, pointing to a white line around the
brain. “This means shrinkage. And this here...” she moved her pen to
a squiggly bit in the middle of Dad’s brain, “This shows evidence ofstroke.” She paused and gave her diagnosis: Alzheimer’s Dementia.
I usually stop telling the story at this point. I don’t really remember
what the doctor said next.
Dad has heard this story at least 20 times now, but with every telling
it hits him for the first time. He listens intently and then stares
despondently into the space directly in front of him with his hands
resting in his lap.
“But I don’t remember that,” he’ll say quietly, pleadingly.
If you don’t remember an event, did it even happen? Maybe I’ll
forget, too, and we can pretend nothing has changed.What do you do when your parents get old? When, quite suddenly,
you have all the responsibility. You have to know better than them;
tell them what to do; remind them to take their medication; and plead
with them to please, please wear clean clothes and stop eating with
their hands, because they’ve quite suddenly forgotten what a fork is.
People call responsibility a ‘burden’, but I don’t think that’s fair. Life
isn’t fair. Neither is disease, or old age. To me, responsibility just feels
like a way of managing your own sadness – of transforming the pain in
your heart into something productive.I am doing something,youcan
tell yourself when you’re mopping the toilet floor. Doing something is
good. If you didn’t, you might just crumple and crinkle and cry.
When I was little, I completely idolised my dad. He was smart!
He was the strongest! He had overcome all kinds of terrible
obstacles to become a big-time farmer! We’d go on long walks
in the dusky evenings and he’d talk to me about his day and
whatever else came to mind. The walking track was lined with
grain silos and we’d count how many we passed so we’d know
how far we’d walked. “It’s been a four-silo night!” Dad would say
enthusiastically when we got back to our front door.
Dad can’t go for walks much anymore. He doesn’t remember
the grain silos. He still remembers some things, though. He still
remembers me. And, even if all his memories run out, I still know,
in some way, we’ll still have each other.remember me
LIFE ISN’T FAIR, BUT CATE ROONEY
IS DOING ALL SHE CAN.
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