The Little Girl in the Radiator: Mum Alzheimer's & Me (7 page)

MUM WAS UP, washed, dressed and ready to
go. She had her raincoat on, headscarf, and gloves. Her big handbag hung from
the crook of her left arm, and her bus pass was in her right hand.

‘I’m off now!’ she called back over her
shoulder. ‘See you later.’

She couldn’t get out of the house because I
had turned the deadbolt key, and then had hidden the key in my room.

‘The door’s locked!’ she called from the
hallway. ‘I can’t get out.’

I tried to ignore her.

‘Martin, I can’t get out!’ she called again.

‘It’s a quarter past three in the morning!’
I shouted, pulling the pillow over my head.

‘I have an appointment at the
hairdresser’s!’ she shouted back. ‘I can’t get out!’

‘It’s a quarter past
three
in the
bloody
morning
, mum!’ I shouted. ‘The hairdresser’s doesn’t open for six
hours. Go back to bed!’

I could hear her step lightly along the hall
carpet, and then disappear into her own room. I fell back to sleep.

She was back,
Groundhog Day
-like,
before long.

‘I’ll see you later!’ she called from the
front door.

I awoke again with a start, and looked at
the clock with one eye. It was four o’clock. I could hear the handle being
rattled.

‘Martin, the door’s locked, I can’t get
out!’

I threw the duvet back with a violent sweep
of my arm and sprang out of bed. I had had enough of this.

The effects and symptoms of Alzheimer’s
disease are many and varied; people reading this who have to deal with the
disease in a loved one may recognise some of the scenes described here, and
others will have different stories to tell. However, there does seem to be one
aspect of the disease which appears to affect most sufferers, and that is a
loss of the perception of time. The very concept seems utterly to lose its
meaning; a clock face appears only as an abstract pattern of numbers and lines,
and any meaning or significance to the pattern is lost. The phrase, ‘Three
o’clock’ may as well be an equation in quantum physics.

‘Mum!’ I said, exasperatedly, ‘it’s the
middle of the bloody night. It’s four o’clock in the morning, I have to be up
for work at seven, so please… GO TO BED!’

I went back into my room and crashed back
between the sheets, so tired I could hardly think straight.

‘IF I’M LATE FOR MY HAIR APPOINTMENT SHE
WON’T DO IT!’ bawled mum at the top of her voice.

I opened my eyes. She had followed me into
the bedroom.

I jumped out of bed again. Mum ran from my
room and into hers, and I chased her there.

‘Get into bed this minute!’ I shouted.

I was pointing at the bed like some irate
dad, scolding a naughty child.

‘I will not!’ shouted mum.

‘Yes, you will!’

‘I WILL
NOT
!’ repeated mum, her voice
rising to a scream.

‘Fine!’ I said. ‘Bloody well stay there
then, but I have to get some sleep!’

I went back into my room, and somehow sleep
came to me again. I had just drifted off again when I felt a pushing against my
shoulder, and awoke again to find mum sitting on the side of the bed.

‘I don’t want to live here any more,’ she
said simply. ‘I want to go back to my own house.’

It took me a couple of seconds to focus on
the bedside clock. It was now 5am.

‘This
is
your house,’ I sighed.

‘No, I mean my
real
house,’ insisted mum. ‘I want to go back there now.’

‘This
is
your real house,’ I growled.

‘No it isn’t,’ replied mum, defiantly
shaking her head.

‘YES IT
IS
!’
I shouted.

‘NO IT
ISN’T
!’
shouted back mum. She was sitting on the edge of my bed, and we were shouting
at one another. Alzheimer’s makes everyone crazy.

‘I mean my
own
house, the one with the green kitchen floor,’ said mum, in a suddenly softer
voice.

I tried to calm down and think. No, I didn’t
know what she meant.

‘We’ve never lived in a house with a green
kitchen floor,’ I said. ‘Will you
please
go back to bed? Please?’

‘It has a beautiful kitchen,’ she said. ‘All
the cupboards are in real wood, and the floor is green.’

I was trying to remember that it wasn’t
mum’s fault. I was trying not to get angry with her, but I was so tired I could
hardly focus on the conversation.

‘Just go to bed, please, mum!’

‘I’ll go to bed in my own house. I don’t
like it here any more, there’s too much shouting.’

‘You’re doing most of the shouting,’ I said.
‘We’ve never
had
a house with a green floor, this
is
your house,
I need some sleep, so
please
… go to bed!’

Mum began to rummage through her handbag,
lifting out all sorts of things: a pair of mismatched gloves, a small umbrella,
a shoe, a dirty coffee mug, endless bits of crumpled papers. She spread them
all out on the bed, and started to unfold the papers, checking them one by one,
and then replacing them carefully back into the bag. Finally, she straightened
one out and showed it to me.

‘Look!’ she said, shoving the paper at me.

I looked at it; it was a bank statement.

‘What are you showing me that for?’

‘It’s my hairdressing appointment,’ said
mum, ‘and you’re going to make me late.’

‘It’s a bank statement, mum, and it’s now
five in the morning,’ I sighed. ‘Please, go to bed.’

Suddenly there was a massive crash on the
bed as Bruno landed on it. He had his lead in his mouth and his tail was going
nineteen to the dozen.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake!’ I whimpered,
burying my head in the pillow.

Mum got up and left the room, and Bruno
followed her. I could hear her moving up and down the hallway. Then there was
silence. I must have fallen asleep again. I was awoken by another shout.

‘I’m going to tell the police about you
keeping me a prisoner!’ yelled mum from the hallway, suddenly. ‘Then they’ll
put you in jail!’

‘GO TO BED!’ I screamed.

At 7am my alarm went off, and I dragged
myself upright. I dressed, and looked into mum’s room. She wasn’t there. I
found her asleep in the living room chair, still dressed, still wearing her
headscarf. Bruno, lying at her feet, looked up at me, but didn’t move. I
decided not to disturb her. I dressed quietly, had some coffee, and left the
house for work.

* * * * *

How I managed to get through that day
without falling asleep I shall never know. It seemed endless but, eventually,
with my shift over, I headed home.

As soon as I pulled up outside the house,
Mary next door came to her front door and waved me over, anxiously. Mary’s
drive and mum’s were side by side, with a small, wooden fence separating them;
the two front doors were actually at the sides of each property, and faced each
other.

‘Bruno’s been barking for hours!’ said Mary.
‘I think there’s something wrong. My phone’s not working so I couldn’t ring
you.’

My heart pumping, visions of what I might
find, I put my key into the door. I could hear the dog going berserk. As soon
as I turned the handle he barged past me and then ran back into the hall;
excited and skittish, he started to run around the small bungalow, in and out
of each of the rooms, whining and barking.

‘Mum?’ I called, but there was no answer. I
checked every room, including the garage and the garden shed, but she was gone.
How she’d got out I wasn’t sure, but got out she had. Bruno sat down and looked
at me, as if to say, ‘What shall we do now?’

‘Is everything all right?’ said Mary, from
her front door.

I went back outside. ‘Mum’s gone!’ I said.

‘Oh dear,’ replied Mary. ‘Ring the police –
tell them she’s missing.’

‘I will,’ I said, and called the police. I
gave them a description of mum, and what she had been wearing when I had last
seen her. They said they would notify any cars in the area and keep a lookout
for her, and took my mobile telephone number. They also advised me to call the
hospital.

I rang the Walsgrave, Coventry’s main
hospital, and waited while they checked their admissions for that afternoon;
no-one answering mum’s description had been seen there. They did have a woman
who seemed very confused and lost, and whom they thought might have a form of
dementia, but she was Afro-Caribbean. I wondered how many people with dementia
were lost in a middling-sized city like Coventry at any given moment; there
were at least two today.

I rang Wendy, on the off-chance that mum had
gone there again.

‘Yes,’ said Wendy. ‘She was here for hours,
but she’s gone now, she said she was going back home.’

‘You should have held on to her!’ I said.
‘You shouldn’t have let her go!’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think. She seemed all
right to us. She stayed for a while, then she said she had a hair appointment,
and she left. I had no reason to keep her.’

I apologised; it wasn’t Wendy’s fault. In
fact, it wasn’t anyone’s fault but mine. I must have forgotten to turn the
deadlock key when I had left for work that morning. She could have left any
time she liked.

I looked at Bruno, sitting in the hallway,
watching me closely, his horizontal ears pricked, rigid with anticipation.

‘I wonder if you could find her?’ I said to
him. He turned his head to an angle, so that one ear was higher than the other,
like a motorcycle leaning into a bend. ‘It’s worth a go,’ I said.

I put the lead on his collar, and we went
out into the street.

By now it was around 5pm, and I let Bruno
take the lead. He sniffed at the floor, turned this way, and then that way, and
finally headed off down the road towards the shops. We passed Harry’s, and I
stuck my head around the door.

‘Hi, Harry,’ I called. ‘Have you seen my mum
today?’

‘Yes, Martin. She was in here about an hour
ago,’ he called back.

That was good news: we were getting warmer.

‘Do I owe you any money?’ I asked.

‘No. She bought some chocolate biscuits, but
she had her own money with her,’ replied Harry, ‘Is everything all right?’

‘She’s gone missing,’ I said. ‘She’s
basically lost.’

‘Do you want me to come with you?’ asked
Harry.

I was very grateful. No wonder Harry’s
little shop was so popular with everyone on the estate.

‘That would be great, Harry. Thank you very
much.’

He said something to his wife in Urdu, and
she went behind the counter while Harry put his coat on. His two sons were
stacking shelves at the back of the shop. Harry shouted to them, and they
stopped what they were doing and put their coats on, too.

‘They can help,’ he said to me.

‘Thanks very much, Harry,’ I said.

The two lads smiled at me as they passed,
and went out into the street, heading back towards the bungalow.

‘If you just drive around the local streets,
Harry,’ I said, ‘I’ll take the dog through the park.’

‘No problem,’ said Harry, as he got into his
car.

Within minutes we had a mini search party
organised, with people going off in all directions from the little shop. The
big supermarkets were killing Harry’s little business, and when they finally
finished him off – as they did a few years after this – they also destroyed a
focal point in the local community, one of those landmarks that helped glue it
together. There was more to Harry’s than just a shop: it was a part of the
living estate, of our small community, and it was dying. Harry wasn’t going
down without a fight, but it was a battle he was doomed to lose.

Our local park is not that big, but it is
well-used by local dog walkers and children. There is a play area for young
kids, with slides and swings, and a skate bowl made of concrete where older
kids on bikes and skateboards practise their skills with their friends. There
were some kids in the skate bowl, and we started our search by walking over to
them.

‘Hi, lads,’ I called out to the small group.
One of them came over. ‘Has anyone seen an elderly lady in a white raincoat?’

‘I seen someone like that,’ he said. ‘She
went up that way.’

He pointed to the far end of the park. I
looked the way he pointed but couldn’t see mum in the distance.

‘How long ago was this?’ I asked.

‘Not long,’ he replied. ‘I ain’t got a
watch.’

‘Thanks anyway,’ I said, and we started off
again the way the lad had indicated.