The Little Girl in the Radiator: Mum Alzheimer's & Me (20 page)

Soon we said our goodbyes, and dropped in to
see Mrs Porter on our way out.

‘I just wanted to let you know that there’s
no money left in mum’s account,’ she said. ‘And the hairdresser is due to
arrive next Wednesday. Mum does like to have her hair done, doesn’t she?’

‘She does,’ I said. I agreed that mum did
like to have her hair done and handed over £50.

‘That should keep her going for a bit,’ I
said.

Mrs Porter handed me a receipt.

‘My mother’s a lot happier here than she was
at her previous home,’ I said. ‘We’re very pleased she’s been able to come
here.’

‘Where was she before?’ asked Mrs Porter.

I mentioned the name, and her face crinkled
up like a freeze-dried prune.

‘Professionally, I can’t really comment,’
she said. ‘But I guarantee you we have… ’ She was searching for the right word.
‘Er… Shall we say, we have
standards
here. And we are proud of our
standards.’

‘I agree,’ I said. ‘It’s just a pity that
all homes are not run in the same way.’

‘They’re supposed to be,’ she said. ‘But in
the real world, what is supposed to happen and what really does happen are not
always the same thing.’

We agreed that they were not indeed. We
shook her hand again, and left. I felt that she was the sort of person you
could trust your life-savings to – or, more importantly, the welfare of your
mother.

The next day at work I went to the Post
Office in my lunch break.

Dear Mrs Slevin,

We were shocked and dismayed to
discover that your chocolates have been stolen by a person or persons unknown,
who have been secreting themselves under your bed at night. Please rest assured
we are doing everything in our power to bring the culprits to justice; in the
meantime, please accept this box of chocolates as a small token of our esteem,
and say hello to Wing Commander Frank for us.

Chief Inspector Nitram Nivels,

Coventry
Sweetie Police.

AS MUM’S DAYS at Charnwood House slowly
turned into weeks, and then into months, she came to consider her time there in
terms of her own lifespan; that is to say, she completely lost all recollection
of ever having lived anywhere else.

All the years before her arrival at
Charnwood ceased to mean anything to her. All the events of those years – the
people who inhabited those important former times, all her family and friends,
the places and happenings – all dropped their mental connections with her, one
by one, until the microcosm that was Charnwood House was all she came to know
and understand in the world.

The rug of her memories, as the first
consultant had told me it would be almost five years before, had now been
rolled up so far that only a distorted version of her childhood remained, and
that childhood had all been spent in Charnwood House. It was as if she had been
born there, had gone to school there, had married my dad and given birth to me
there, had spent her life and career there, and now in her old age, was
resigned to staying there forever, never having been anywhere else at all. Mum
became fearful of the outside world, and any suggestion of her ever having to
leave Charnwood House would send her into a tearful and nervous panic.

The Irish band and her shaven pal Bruno were
never mentioned again; the events of the Christmas she had enjoyed so much with
me were erased completely, and my own identity and history with my parents at
home had dissolved utterly into the fog of her Alzheimer’s. Even my father,
whom mum had been married to for 60 happy years, was only a distant shadow
without substance, or form. Dad had become an indistinct idea rather than a
real person to her, as though she had met him in a dream the night before and
now, upon waking, she could focus on his form and features no longer.

But in the midst of all this waste, this
terrible loss of all things ancient, sacred and treasured, the little girl in
the radiator remained as firmly rooted into mum’s everyday consciousness and
reality as anything could be said to be.

She spoke to the little girl every day, and
when Heather and I paid our weekly visit to Charnwood House, I would watch her
secretly looking towards any radiator in the building and smiling or shaking
her head; clearly, the little girl inhabited not one but every radiator. Mum’s
lips would move very slowly and softly when she spoke to the little girl, as
though they were always passing secrets between themselves, and the
understanding they shared together was strictly for the two of them alone. It
would be no exaggeration to state that the little girl in the radiator had
become my mum’s only reliable constant, a dependable anchor and friend in a
vast, uncharted ocean of uncertainty, confusion and change.

One day in the late summer of 2006, Heather
had asked me to drop into Charnwood House on my way home from work to deliver
some toiletries, chocolates and clothes to mum.

‘Give her my love,’ Heather had said as I
left for work that morning.

I arrived at Charnwood at around 5pm that
evening, just as all the residents were having supper. I didn’t like to disturb
mum by arriving at meal times, and so I decided to go straight to her room and
put the toiletries away for her. As I walked down the corridor from the main
entrance, the whistling woman was walking up the other way towards me. At first
I didn’t notice anything to be different, but then I suddenly realised there
was silence in the corridor. The whistling woman had stopped whistling, and was
walking perfectly normally down the corridor.

‘Hello,’ she said as she passed me. She
could have been a visitor.

I stopped dead in my tracks and looked after
her. She went down the corridor and turned into the communal lounge, where my
mum was having supper. A nurse saw my puzzlement. ‘She stopped whistling
yesterday,’ she said, ‘and she hasn’t whistled since.’

The whistling woman never whistled again, as
far as I know: for some reason, she just stopped, and that was that. One day,
perhaps, we will understand the secret mechanics of dementia, and Alzheimer’s
in particular; but until then, there will remain a tantalising mystery, and a
sad, magical enchantment entwined around the condition that fascinates all who
come into contact with it like no other human ailment can.

When I entered mum’s room I was shocked to
see that all the little ornaments we had brought here from mum’s home were
damaged in some way. The little figures mum had cherished for years when I was
growing up had all had their heads broken off. The porcelain flower bowl was
broken into two halves, and some of her photo frames containing pictures of her
grandchildren were snapped or bent. The room looked like it had been burgled by
some heartless criminal, but of course that wasn’t the case.

‘Peggy did it,’ said mum, when I questioned
her later. ‘Isn’t she a bitch for doing that?’

I wanted to put the broken pieces into the
wastepaper basket, but mum stopped me.

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘Frank can glue
all those back together.’

‘Why would Aunt Peggy do such a thing?’ I
asked.

Mum shrugged her shoulders. ‘Who knows?’ she
whispered. ‘Maybe she’s jealous of me and Frank.’

‘I’ve put some more clothes in your
wardrobe,’ I said, ‘and some toiletries into the bathroom. There’s some
chocolates in the drawer.’

Mum stood up and went to the drawer, she
took out the chocolates.

‘Let’s have some sweets before
he
gets hold of them!’ announced mum, her eyes darting to the space under her bed.

‘Is he still under there?’ I asked.

‘He comes and goes,’ said mum. ‘They can’t
catch him.’

I happened to have a small tube of glue in
the car, which was still in there after I had fixed something the week before.

‘I can glue those ornaments for you,’ I
said. ‘Wait here and have some chocolates, mum. I’ll be back in a minute.’

It was no more than a two minute walk to the
car and back. When I returned to mum’s room I could hear whispered voices. The
bedroom door was ajar, and I peered through the gap between the door and the
frame. Mum was kneeling in front of the radiator, the box of chocolates was on
the floor in front of her, and she was holding out a chocolate to the radiator.
I understood immediately what she was doing; she was offering a chocolate to
the little girl.

I stepped into the room as softly as I
could, and stood waiting quietly behind her; she had no idea I was there. Mum
would take a chocolate from the box, offer it to the little girl, and then seem
to freeze, her arm outstretched. After a few seconds of this, where mum would
whisper something to the little girl that I couldn’t hear, she would pop the
chocolate into her own mouth. Then she would take another from the box, and the
whole thing would start over.

Eventually, I had to speak. ‘Is she still in
there, mum?’ I said.

‘She’s always going to be in there,’ replied
mum, over her shoulder. ‘She can’t get out.’

‘Why can’t she?’ I asked, kneeling down
beside her. I had become as much involved with the little girl as mum.

‘It’s very dark in there,’ whispered mum,
‘and she can’t see her way out. She can’t find the door, the poor little
thing.’

‘Is she very unhappy?’ I asked. I wondered
if the little girl in the radiator could be helped to escape, and whether that
might have a beneficial effect on mum’s Alzheimer’s. It sounded completely
crazy, but she believed in the little girl so much that if something good were
to happen to her perhaps it might also produce benefits for my mum, too.
Stranger things have happened to Alzheimer’s patients than that.

‘She’s not very unhappy,’ said mum softly.
‘She’s just lost in the dark, and she’s confused. Sometimes she gets very
frightened in there.’

‘Is that why you always talk to her?’ I
asked quietly.

‘I don’t want her to be in the dark on her
own,’ replied mum. ‘She’s so little, really.’

‘You’ve become a very good friend to her,’ I
said.

Mum smiled. ‘She needs a good friend.’

‘Do you think she’s ever going to come out?’
I whispered.

Mum looked at me, sadly. ‘I don’t see how
she can,’ she confessed.

She had always been very reluctant to
discuss her relationship with the little girl in the radiator, and it had taken
the best part of three years for her to open up this much with me about it. But
this evening she seemed more willing than usual to talk about her little
friend, and I decided to push the matter as far as she would be willing to
allow it.

‘What’s she like, the little girl?’ I asked.

Mum seemed to think about the question for a
moment.

‘She’s a nice little girl,’ said mum, very
softly; so softly, in fact, that I could barely hear the words as they escaped
her lips.

‘Where does she come from, do you know?’ I
asked.

There was so long a pause here that I
thought mum hadn’t heard the question. I was about to ask it again when mum
spoke. ‘I know everything about her now,’ she said. ‘She comes from Dublin, but she can’t ever go home, not now.’

‘Perhaps together we could help her to
escape?’ I said.

‘She would like that,’ replied mum, ‘but
it’s so dark in there that she could never find her way home again.’

‘Has she told you that?’ I asked.

Mum nodded. ‘She tells me everything.’

‘What does she tell you?’

I was trying to keep mum talking, to keep
her attention on the little girl in the radiator, so that we could perhaps get
to the bottom of this enduring mystery at last.

‘She tells me lots of things,’ replied mum.
‘She tells me how kind to me you are, and how good to me you have been. She
tells me secrets about Peggy, and about me mammy. She knows all about me, and I
know all about her.’

‘You’ve become very close then, you and this
little girl,’ I said.

‘We’re the same,’ replied mum, simply.

I felt a lump swell in my throat as the
penny began to drop.

‘Do you know her name?’ I asked. But I
already knew the answer.

‘Her name is Rose,’ replied mum, with a
sigh.

We knelt there on the floor of her room
together facing the radiator in silence. As the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle
suddenly snapped into place, I thought that Alzheimer’s disease was the
cruellest of all human ills. For it not only robs the sufferer of hope and a
future, but as it goes it steals their very identity as well.

‘Her name is Rose?’ I said. The words caught
in my throat.

Mum nodded, and continued to look at the
floor.

‘She’s you, isn’t she?’ I whispered, and my
eyes filled with tears that I could not hold back. ‘You’re the little girl in
the radiator, aren’t you?’

‘She’s trapped in the dark,’ replied mum.

I thought my heart would break.

‘She can’t get out,’ whispered mum. ‘She
gets so lost and confused. I’ve tried to help her, but I don’t know how.’

I put my arm around her and she put her head
against my shoulder, and we both started to sob. We stayed there on the floor
of her room for a long time like that; not speaking a word, just holding each
other. With the discovery at last of the identity of the little girl in the
radiator had come a crashing clarity of understanding for me. I now knew why
this delusion above all others had persisted through the years, and why the
image of a small child, alone, frightened and abandoned in the dark, was the
perfect description of the effects of Alzheimer’s itself. When I finally
understood that the little girl Rose in the radiator and the elderly woman Rose
in the world were one and the same, I understood more about her condition than
all the doctors and consultants had been able to explain in the five years
since her diagnosis.

To the outside world, such fantasies are the
direct result of madness and nothing the patient says or suggests can have any
value. This is a great mistake. Such fantasies are rooted in the depths of the
past, nearly always based on real incidents. What they say in the midst of such
fantasies are not really ‘delusions’ at all, they are merely the retelling of
real events which are now misplaced in time. I don’t mean, of course, that
there was ever really a little girl in a radiator; but once I understood mum’s
viewpoint the story made sense.

We knelt, hugged, rocked and wept together,
there on the floor of her room, until we could hug and weep no more. Mum went
to her bed after that, and I drove home to Heather, with my soul in shreds.

Something happened to both my mother and me
that day, and even now I cannot quite understand what it was.

For mum, I think the revealing of the
identity of the little girl in the radiator was almost like a sacred
confession: the disclosing of a long and faithfully-held secret which
unburdened her when the weight of it was finally set down.

For me, a feeling of utter foolishness
engulfed me like a blanket. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have
failed to guess that the little girl in the radiator and my mother were one and
the same? How could I have not seen that the little girl was a pictorial
representation in mum’s mind of her own vulnerability, due to the wasting
disease that poisoned her brain? That mum’s own sense of hopelessness regarding
her condition was indeed like being lost in the dark, and the radiator was
merely a convenient place for the two ideas to be housed together?