REMEMBERING GRAN

KATE MARTIN DESCRIBES WATCHING THE DISEASE GRIP HER GRANDMOTHER JENNY

A moving account of the impact of Alzheimer’s

Iam 10 years old and Mum tells me Granny hasn’t been “right” for a while. She tells me she has a disease called Alzheimer’s that makes you forget things. It’s the reason why Granny forgets to throw out her food when it goes off, and why she once served a cake to visitors with a film of green mould over the top.

It’s the reason money and jewellery in the house keeps on disappearing, why she drove the wrong way around a roundabout, why she got out of her car in a supermarket car park and asked a stranger to park it for her. Being 10, and unaware of the complexities of neurological disease, I don’t think this is anything serious.

I think it’s going to Tesco and forgetting to buy milk, or accidentally skipping an important birthday. I think of it as merely an extension of my grandmother’s somewhat eccentric personality. I have not yet come to think of Alzheimer’s as a malignant, living organism that feeds on a person – devouring their first kiss, their wedding day, the faces of their children.

I have not yet realised the disease robs a person of their personality, and then in its last act of malice, begins to suck away at the most basic functions of the brain and body – the throat forgets to swallow, the lungs forget to breathe, the heart forgets to beat. At 10, I don’t know how this will come to

hurt my family. By the time I’m 14, my grandmother is no longer fit to live alone in her bungalow in Tillicoultry.

The first time I visit her at the care home I don’t know what to expect. It could have been just an ordinary house, with neat flower beds, if it were not for the iron fence and the gate that shuts with an ominous clang. My uncle once held open the gate for a man in the garden carrying a briefcase. “Thanking you,” the man had said, striding into the street. My uncle hadn’t realised what he’d done until two carers ran out shouting “Bill! Bill!”, gently taking his arm to usher him back up the path.

The first thing I notice on stepping inside is the smell: mustiness, laced with urine and disinfectant. It’s the same smell that lingers in hospital waiting rooms and doctor

surgeries. The smell of a lost cause.

Iam 17 and we’re visiting because it’s Christmas. I now know what the home is like. I know Mary, who is never without the cuddly toy cat she strokes and talks to and scolds for “piddling everywhere” as if it were real. I know Bill, the escapee who is never without his brown briefcase and is always convinced he has an important meeting to attend.

Jim is there too, stooped over and walking in circles and blowing raspberries the way a young child would do. He is the only one who doesn’t have Alzheimer’s or dementia. I’m told he was injured in an industrial accident. One day he was normal, the next he wasn’t. His wife is always there when we

visit – holding his hand and keeping up a breezy one-sided conversation. I try to imagine what her life is like. I wonder if she ever pulled up to the care home and ended up sitting there, fighting the temptation to drive home again. If she ever wishes she were somewhere else, she never shows it.

Inside the TV room, most of the residents are sitting in plastic green armchairs. There’s a mini Christmas tree in the corner with lights that fade slowly in and out. There’s a man I don’t recognise in a kilt and a black shirt setting up an amp and microphone in the corner. On the table are plates of cold party food covered up in clingfilm. My granny is in a chair with her hands fluttering at her lap. We have a

routine when we visit which involves Mum saying hello then presenting us one by one, saying our names clearly and deliberately.

For a long time we could see a flicker of recognition when we visited. She recognised us, her family. All she struggled with before was our names. Now she’s worse and her pale-blue eyes look glassy and unknowing when we go to hug her. All of the residents have that look, like some sort of light has been extinguished from their eyes. The moment I notice that look in my granny’s face is the moment I know she isn’t really here any more.

Wee Jenny Johnston, the farmer’s daughter, the mother of four and grandmother of eight, the woman who couldn’t walk through Dollar without someone recognising her from when she and Grandpa owned the sweet shop, the woman who never had trouble speaking her mind, is just a collection of figments of identity preserved only in the memories of those who come to visit.

On this occasion I notice her speech has deteriorated. Practically all of Clackmannanshire knew my grandmother could talk for Scotland. Any time there was a piece of gossip she seized upon it and phoned everyone she could think of, sometimes more than once, in her eagerness to spread it. Now, another part of our routine is for Mum to tell us to “think of things to tell Granny”. We do and she looks at us and simply says “aye”, as if she isn’t sure why we are speaking to her.

The music begins. The man in the kilt is singing You Cannae Shove Your Granny Off

It is so hard to know if they are happy. Do they know they are ill? Do they have an inkling they were someone else once?

A Bus. A questionable choice, considering the audience. Every so often he catches the eye of one of the residents and a wide grin spreads across his face as he sings. I wonder if this is the showbiz career he envisioned. Most of the residents are sitting down, some more aware of their surroundings than others.

I’m annoyed that my sister has opted not to come to the party. If I have to dance with Granny to Old MacDonald Had A Farm, so should she. There’s a man with a walking stick who can barely stand but he’s trying to dance, wobbling precariously around. At one point the wiggle of his hips is so manic that my aunt springs to her feet and wrestles him into a chair to stop him keeling over. She decides she can’t sit beside him because he keeps winking at her. Mum and I can’t stop laughing. It feels strange to laugh here, in the face of indignity and despair. Guilty as we may feel later, we cling to that humour as if it somehow might fend off the next stage in the inevitable decline.

A man dressed as Santa hands out gifts to each of the residents. Most of the parcels sit

untouched or are opened by the visiting family members, but one man puts his into his mouth and has to have it torn from him by a carer. It strikes me how bizarre these events are, but if they make the residents feel happy they should continue. It is so hard to know if they are happy. Do they know they are ill? Do they have any inkling that they were someone else once?

It’s two days after my 18th birthday and it’s too late for hope, even science. Granny’s room has been cleared out and her possessions sit before us. We eye them awkwardly, reluctant vultures, none of us wanting to be the first. I wonder who will bury her at the back of a drawer, who will display her on the coffee table, who will sell her online. I feel as if a great anticlimax has been reached. Is this the product of a life? A collection of ornaments and a diamond ring missing a stone and an old pocket watch her father left her? At 18 I feel compelled to ensure I leave more behind than this. To be thankful for the thrum of blood through my temples and the thoughts that whirr in my head and prevent me from sleeping. To use

the mind I have, for good, while I can.

In her younger days Jenny Johnston was renowned for her talkative nature, but towards the end of her life she struggled toeven speak

PHOTOGRAPH: NICK PONTY Kate Martin’s grandmother, above left with her husband Andrew, had four children and rana sweet shop