In memory of Paul Stanley Moore: Dad extraordinaire.
Of this at least I feel assured, that there is no such thing as forgetting possible to the mind; a thousand accidents may and will interpose a veil between our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on the mind; accidents of the same sort will also rend away this veil; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains for ever, just as the stars seem to withdraw before the common light of day, whereas in fact we all know that it is the light which is drawn over them as a veil, and that they are waiting to be revealed when the obscuring daylight shall have withdrawn.
Thomas De Quincey
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
Chapter 1
MY GRANDDAD was pretty much the cleverest person I ever met, so it was strange in the end to see the way people treated him—as if he was a complete moron. We were waiting for a train one day, not bothering anyone, when this boy said to me, “Hey. Hey you. What’s wrong with the old man?”
In fairness, my granddad did happen to be in the middle of quite a long conversation with a lamppost. But still, it didn’t give the boy the right to be so nosy.
I walked a bit closer to the boy, and I whispered:
“He suffers from a rare condition that makes him randomly violent to anyone who asks stupid questions about people they’ve never met.”
That very same week me and Granddad saw this program all about how Albert Einstein was always looking for his keys and wearing odd shoes and not brushing his hair for weeks on end.
“See, Granddad?” I said to him. “Einstein was exactly the same as you are. And no one ever thought there was anything wrong with his brain.”
“No one except for his teachers, who apparently thought he was an imbecile,” my granddad replied.
The next day he asked me where the toilet was. And the day after that he looked at me suddenly and he said, “Maggie, Maggie, what’s the plan of action now? When are we all going home?” which was kind of confusing, seeing as there was no plan of action, and seeing as we already were at home. And also seeing as my name is not Maggie.
My name is Cosmo. When I’m a legal adult, I’m going to change it by deed poll. I’ve checked it out, and it’s fairly straightforward.
The first time Granddad peed in the dishwasher was when me and my gran realized we were going to have to make a few changes. For one thing, we got into the habit of putting the superhot cycle on twice.
He began to repeat things over and over, and I knew that there was definitely something wrong, because he hadn’t usually been a repetitive sort of guy. It got to be pretty annoying. He began to forget the kinds of things that you’d never imagine anyone could forget, like for example that my brother, Brian, was dead, even though by then he’d been dead for quite a while. Granddad got this idea that Brian was actually in the kitchen, completely alive, and ready to make cups of tea for anyone who shouted at him.
“BRIAN! BRIAN!” he’d yell. “DO US A FAVOR LIKE A GOOD FELLOW, AND BRING US A CUP OF TEA!”
So then I’d usually have to go off and make the stupid tea. Granddad always said, “Ah, fantastic,” right after he took the first sip, as if drinking a cup of tea was the best thing ever.
When he started to get up in the middle of the night and wander around the house, poking about and searching in drawers and stuff, me and my gran kept having to follow him. We’d have to think of quite clever ways to convince him to go back to bed, which usually took ages. He’d sometimes have gone out into the garden before we’d even woken up, and we’d run out to him where he stood shivering, thin and empty. Like a shadow.
I’d say, “Granddad, what are you doing out here in the dark like this?” And he’d say, “I don’t know really. I used to love the dark.”
And after that my gran would sit with him as if he was the one who needed to be comforted, even though it was me who’d been woken up in the middle of the night. He would say, “Oh, my girl,” in a way that made it sound like Granny Deedee was someone quite young, which obviously she isn’t. And she’d look down at his hands and stroke them and she’d tell him how beautiful they were.
Don’t get me wrong—I mean, you could say a lot of nice things about my granddad, because he was a great guy and everything—but I really don’t think you could say his hands were beautiful. For one thing, they were old and brown and bent like the roots of a tree. And for another thing, instead of an index finger he had a kind of stump on his right hand that only went as far as his first knuckle. It wasn’t that noticeable except when he was trying to point at something.
Whenever I asked him what happened to that finger, he would look down and his eyes would go all round and he would say, “Good God! My finger. It’s missing! Assemble a search party!”
It was kind of a joke that me and him had before he got sick. Nobody else got it.
I tried to talk to my gran about Granddad’s memory, but she pretended it really wasn’t that big a deal. She said we would do our best for him for as long as we could, but eventually we’d have to tell Uncle Ted, who at the time was living in San Francisco being a scientist and never answering his phone.
“Aren’t there brain pills or something that Granddad can take?”
“Cosmo, love, he’s already on lots of medication.”
“Well, no offense, Gran, but you’d better go back to the doctor with him and change the dose.”
“It’s not the dose,” she said. “It’s the illness.”
I didn’t think that was a very constructive attitude. I told her I knew for a fact that there were loads of doctors who didn’t have that much of a clue what they were even talking about. I started telling her about this one guy I’d seen on the True Stories channel who’d had a heart attack because they’d given him rat poison instead of cholesterol pills, but all Gran said was, “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Cosmo, will you please stop it?” which was quite cranky of her if you ask me. She never used to be grumpy like that, no matter how many things I told her about.
Later that night I googled “memory loss,” and I honestly didn’t know why I hadn’t done it sooner. It turns out there’s a load of information for people in our situation. The very first link I clicked on was a website called:
THE MEMORY CURE
Proven strategies to delay and reverse age-related memory loss when someone you love starts to forget.
Those glittery words of hope shone from the screen, making me blink, and I could feel pints of relief pouring through my body, right down into my toes.
Chapter 2
THE MEMORY CURE website had excellent advice written out in handy actions and clear language that anyone could understand:
ACTION NUMBER 1: Talk to your loved one about times gone by. Use old photos of family and friends to initiate conversations about the past. You’ll be surprised the things that such conversations will awaken.
In the corner of the living room there were photographs of all of us—pictures of my mum and my uncle Ted when they were young, and there was one of Granddad Kevin and Granny Deedee when they were not that young, but not that old, either, both of them looking into the distance in the same direction. There were also quite humiliating shots of me when I was a naked baby, with my brother, Brian.
I wouldn’t have minded being named Brian. But it was my brother who got the nonpathetic name, not me. I said to my gran that I thought it wasn’t fair, especially now that he didn’t need his name anymore because he was dead. She said, “Darling, I know you don’t mean that about your lovely brother, whose name will always belong to him,” and I said, “No, no, of course I don’t,” even though I actually did.
“Granddad, who’s this?” I said to him, pointing at one of my baby
pictures.
“I don’t seem to be able to recall,” he said.
“Do you know who I am now?” I said, prodding my chest.
“No,” he said. “I’m really very sorry.”
I told him not to worry, that it was okay, even though obviously there’s nothing okay about forgetting your own grandson.
People go through phases, and a lot of them come out the other side perfectly fine. I don’t think you should write someone off just because they occasionally get a bit mixed-up and have to be shown where the toilet is.
At dinner that night Granddad frowned and chewed his food very slowly, not saying anything for ages. Then he looked up at my gran and he said, “Where’s Brian?”
“Oh dear, now, don’t distress yourself,” my gran said to him, which was kind of condescending as far as I was concerned.
“Brian fell out of a window,” I said helpfully.
“Did he?” said my granddad.
“Yes, my dear,” my gran said, moving closer to him and softly patting him on the hand, “I’m afraid he did.”
“He’s dead now, isn’t that right?” he said.
“Yes, he is,” my gran replied.
“Oh,” my granddad said. He clenched his jaw, and he kept brushing something invisible off his sweater. “Yes, that’s what I thought. I mean, of course. I knew that.” And he put his hand flat on his forehead and let out this shuddery sigh, and we all stayed quiet for a while, listening to the ticking of the clock on the wall.
There was nothing on the Memory Cure website that showed you what to do if talking about the past made the person you love start to cry, so me and my gran tried to move quickly on to cheering him up by talking about other people that Granddad loved, which was a bit difficult, seeing as many of them had disappeared off to San Francisco or Australia.
ACTION NUMBER 2:
Label common household items and images clearly.
As long as your loved one’s reading capacity remains, this is a good way to help out with their day-to-day functioning.
I set up this quite good system by writing instructions on Post-its and sticking them all over the place. They said things like: “Open the fridge and take out the CHEESE,” “This is the TOILET, which is for PEEING into,” and “This is the DISHWASHER (for washing DISHES).”
I also wrote out people’s names and stuck them on all the photos:
“Brian (your grandson—DEAD)”
“Uncle Ted (your son—in San Francisco)”
“Sophie (your daughter—drumming up business in Sydney)”
On my gran’s picture I wrote, “Deedee (your wife).”
Those signs worked pretty well, except for Brian’s, which didn’t have that great an effect on any of us. I had to take it down quite quickly. It’s one thing knowing that you’ve got a dead brother. It’s another thing having to read it every single time you sit down to eat a bowl of cereal.
So I wrote a new sign that said: “Brian (your grandson—gone away for a while).”
That seemed to comfort Granddad, and in a funny kind of way it comforted me, too. If you read something often enough, part of you can start to believe it. Even if it is a lie and even if you’ve written the lie yourself.
My gran said I worried about the strangest things, like the house falling down. Everyone said it was because my brother had died. They thought that me worrying all the time was my way of being sad. I disagreed. Tragedy isn’t the thing that makes the world a stressful place; it’s the chance of tragedy that makes it stressful, and I guess that’s what tormented me. Constantly being frightened about losing the things that I needed most—it was exhausting.
But it was never so bad when I was with my granddad. Whenever I started to get freaked out about something or other, he always used to notice. He would spot this little bead of worry rising from somewhere deep inside me before I’d even noticed it myself. And whenever he saw that, he would come over a bit closer to me and then he would say, “Cosmo, my old pal, I think it’s time for a bit of rest, don’t you?” And he might suggest that perhaps I’d like to have a bath. And sooner or later I would say, “Yes, I think I would.” And then I would have a bath and he would light this big ancient old candle and put it on the shelf.
He’d have lit a fire by the time I came out of the bathroom, and I’d feel all clean and warm. Granddad liked to read stories to me from old books with hard dark covers by people like Charles Dickens. The stories usually had children in them who were stuck in orphanages or who were sick and poor but very cheerful all the same. They were about people who were forced to work in terrible conditions but loved each other and were polite and did not complain and were very loyal to their family members no matter what.
I would listen to his croaky old voice and I’d feel pretty cozy, and I would have been led away from whatever it was that was making me feel panicky, and instead I would feel soothed and cared for. I’d look at his old face, and the shadows would flicker and flash all around us because the fire would be big and lively by then. I’d feel calmer and more okay. I’d go to bed, and by the next day I’d be more or less fine again.
There was clattering and banging in the kitchen. I came down to see what all the noise was about, ready for the next emergency. But Granddad was making a cheese sandwich for breakfast. He grinned at me. I was delighted. My memory cure tactics were obviously beginning to kick in, and he was suddenly making fantastic progress.
“Trust you to keep me on the straight and narrow,” he said, munching away, pointing at my signs.
Gran was pretty pleased too, even though she usually preferred me to take zero initiative when it came to helping out with the Granddad situation.
“Thank you, Cosmo, for the new signage system; that’s such a kind thing to have done, isn’t it, Kevin?” she said, and Granddad nodded with his mouth full, and Gran patted me on the head as if I were a kitten or a dog or something.
Later that night when I was helping to tuck him into his bed, he looked at me. His eyes had a paleness about them that I’d never seen before. “Bloody hell,” he said. “Who are you?”
And I said, “Granddad, it’s me. Can’t you see it’s me? Me, Cosmo.”
“Well, hello, Cosmo. It’s very nice to meet you. My name’s Kevin, Kevin Lawless.”
I pulled the duvet right up over his shoulders. I told him to try to get some sleep. He said he’d do his best.
Some people might think it would be depressing and miserable to live with people as old as my grandparents—all ticking clocks and hot chocolate and radio quizzes. But it wasn’t like that at all. Mostly it was excellent. They bought a big green lava lamp for my room, which made the light in there look wobbly and interesting, and when I told them the blankets on my bed were a bit scratchy, they immediately got me this huge soft white duvet and a whole load of green pillows. They said that this was my home now and I could bring my friends over whenever I wanted. I decided not to mention the fact that I didn’t have any friends. I didn’t want them to know that their only living grandson was a complete loner. They already had enough on their plates without having to worry about things like that.
My granddad did a lot of nice things for me, but the best thing of all was this: the exact same day I moved in, he drove off to a farm, and when he came back, he had a horse. He reckoned there was no sense keeping his money in the bank anymore.
“There’s nothing quite like owning a horse to take your mind off your troubles,” is what he said then, and he was right. If you take horse ownership seriously, you have lots of responsibilities, like feeding and exercising and foot care, so you can’t waste your time worrying. Whenever I started to brood on anything, my granddad told me how the past is frozen, like ice, and the future is liquid, like water. And how the present is the freezing point of time.
“Make the most of the present,” he said. “It’s usually the only place in which you can get anything worthwhile done.”
I still like to think about that sometimes. The en
tire human race—all of us—warriors of the present, every moment turning liquid future into solid past.
At first Granny Deedee was raging with Granddad about my horse. She asked him whether he had “utterly lost” his “marbles” and said that at the very least he should have consulted her. But he kept telling her that everything was going to be fine, and for a good while she kept believing him. We both did.
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it already, but the reason I had to move in with my grandparents was that my mum had to go to Sydney. It was something to do with how the market had dried up over here.
“At least she has her mobile phone,” my gran had said cheerfully, just after Mum left. And I’d said, “Yeah, great, thank goodness for that.”
Every time Mum called to say hi, I told Gran to let her know that I was a hundred percent fine. Gran would say, “Sweetheart, why don’t you tell her yourself?” holding the phone out toward me like it was some kind of weapon. But I was usually too busy, to be perfectly honest. And anyway, you’re rarely in the mood to talk to a person who goes off to Sydney when there are still loads of people over here who’d have found it sort of handy if she’d stayed where she was.
I don’t mean to be nasty or anything, but I had begun to think that my mum wasn’t really a proper parent. Not only had she given me a fairly stupid name, she had also left me to cope with a lot of things that I shouldn’t have had to deal with at all. I was only a kid. It wasn’t fair. I didn’t pack my bags and say I was leaving, however much I would have liked to. You don’t take off like that just because times have gotten a bit rough. I happen to believe that when you have responsibilities, you should stick around.
I would have much preferred to keep my granddad’s memory problems to myself, but it turns out that the guy I’d met at the train station was in my school. He told some of the people in my class about what he’d seen my granddad doing, and then those guys went around saying that my granddad was a psycho. They told everyone that he talked to lampposts and peed in public, which was true, but it sounded a lot worse the way they said it.
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