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infections caused by incontinence. Visiting her, I was struck by a feeling of deep compassion; she must have sensed this and immediately responded with the words: “You love me.” The moment brought us together in a new and affectionate way. The next thing she said, out of the blue, was: “I’m a bad person.” Given our troubled history, I assumed my presence might have triggered guilt at some old memories. Rather than dismissing her remark as meaningless rambling, I held her hand and talked about our past, explaining that I understood she had done her best. Her eyes were bright and she was nodding as I talked: it was another healing moment, for both of us.
Although I was acting intuitively at the time, years later I discovered there were scientific explanations for our growing ability to communicate. As memory goes and speech is affected, people with Alzheimer’s have a heightened awareness of feelings conveyed through facial expressions, eyes and tone of voice – which would explain why my mother sensed my first feelings of compassion. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco have found that as cognition declines, the part of the brain involved with empathy becomes more active. Having sensed our feelings, sufferers unconsciously mimic us and reflect these feelings back to us – a process called “emotional contagion”. These findings reflect precisely what was happening between my mother and me.
Researchers at Bangor University have found that despite the increasing loss of memory that characterises dementia, what is called “emotional memory” remains intact, which could explain my mother’s mea culpa. As her memory failed and she struggled for words, her focus was more on what she was sensing. She told me, “You have a loving face. I see it in your face. You have lovely hair, nice shoulders, lovely teeth.” She showered me with compliments like this. At first I felt embarrassed by her directness but I learnt to accept her gifts gracefully.
In my desperate attempt to keep our dialogue going as the illness progressed, I searched for meaning in her utterances, which often sounded incomprehensible. I realised that when she couldn’t find the word she wanted to use, she might use another word with a similar meaning, or a metaphor often rich with meaning. “I will fill both cheeks,” she once told me, and I interpreted this as her intention to nourish me, even at this stage in her life.