My Grandma Anne died 40 years ago, just shy of 90. If you went to central casting to get a balabusta/babushka for the role of family matriarch…
…with her shock of jet black hair, presumably from a bottle for most of her life, plus her heavily-Russian-accented voice…
…Grandma Anne Harris would have fitted the bill perfectly.
Grandma’s outstanding involuntary comedy moment was in 1972, when she solemnly announced, as we drove on a family outing, away from Streatham, along Bedford Hill, that I shouldn’t play on the common any more, as bad things happen to people who go there. Someone had cursed the place. It took us a while to work out that she had heard a radio programme, not about Tooting Common, but about Tutankhamun, which was all the rage in London that year.
By 1981, Grandma Anne was in and out of hospital all too regularly. Her age had never previously been a topic of discussion. But my mum was concerned that every time Grandma was taken into hospital, the age she stated on admission was going down. 87…86…82…
…on what turned out to be her last admission to hospital, mum went ballistic when she first looked at Grandma’s notes.
“Look at this”, hissed mum to me, “72-dash-80-plus-question-mark. I’m going to get this put right straight away”. Mum was a numbers person and as far as she was concerned you don’t mess with numbers.
A senior nurse assured mum that the hospital team was fully aware that Grandma Anne was in her late 80s, pushing 90, and that she was receiving appropriate care…
…which might well have been true, but sadly, Grandma Anne died in that hospital bed.
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Roll the clock forward 30 years. My mother was just shy of 90. Unfortunately mum’s grasp on numbers and much else was all mixed up by then. The onset of dementia, which had been gradual for some time, kicked in and kicked on in a rush. Three months before her 90th, my mum went into Nightingale; the care home at which she had volunteered for many decades.
Janie and I made a big fuss for mum’s 90th birthday, inviting mum and the family over for an afternoon party at our house.
Mum liked being the centre of attention and over the ensuing weeks talked a great deal about her big birthday event with her friends at Nightingale.
But mum became convinced that the birthday had been her hundredth, not her ninetieth.
On one occasion when mum was talking to me about her 100th party, I challenged her.
“You are 90, mum, not 100”.
“I’m 100. And I’m your mother. Don’t argue with your mother.”
On another occasion, after I’d taken mum back to her room, I was accosted by a brace of her friends.
“Your mum is driving us all mad. She keeps telling everyone that she is 100. There are quite a few people around here who really are 100. It’s not right. She’s just turned 90, hasn’t she?”
“What do you want me to do about it?” I asked.
“Tell her”.
“I’ve told her…and she’s told me not to argue with my mother”.
“It’s wrong. Sort it out.” The Nightingale Mafia had spoken.
I discussed the problem with one of the senior care nurses, who patiently explained to me that people with dementia have their own subjective reality which might differ from our own reality and from objective reality. It’s better to join the loved one in their subjective realities rather than challenge them with our own realities.
This seemed a compelling and compassionate argument…
…until I thought about it a bit more and said…
…“I can roll with that…sort of…but what about mum’s friends’ realities. They want me to stop mum driving them potty with her nonsense about being 100. How do I deal kindly with those conflicting realities?”
After a momentary pause, the nurse said, “welcome to our world”, with just a modicum of compassion.
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Having reflected for the first time on these experiences jointly, my thoughts, like the age claims of both ancestors, are all mixed up.
The family legend about Grandma Anne was that her declining age claims were born of vanity and an unwillingness to accept her antiquity.
But possibly dementia had started to take its toll on Grandma at that age. In her own, disoriented way, grandma was subtracting 18 from her age; while mum added 10 in her confusion.
Should we have accepted Grandma Anne’s subjective reality that she was 72? Might that last hospital stay have gone better had everyone treated her as if she were a 72 year old, rather than a 90 year old? It couldn’t have gone much worse; Grandma Anne came out of hospital that time in a box.
Postscript: About The ThreadMash Evening
Just in case you don’t know what a ThreadMash is, yet want to know, this link (here and below) will explain it to you and link you to some other examples.
Since the one explained/depicted above, ThreadMash has been ThreadZoomMash; a virtual story writing and telling club.
We had seven stories and one apology (from Terry), the latter being so detailed and heartfelt, Kay read the apology at the start of the evening. It was, in its own way, a ThreadMash story.
Jill’s story was really a piece of philosophical musing about technology, moral dilemmas, decision making with and without machines, governance, government…it was truly mind-blowing. I do hope Jill will allow us to publish her piece more widely soon. If/when she does, I’ll add a link here.
Then my story, echoing the moral dilemmas but not the technology.
Rohan’s piece also seemed to echo at least one of my themes; his distinct yet overlapping stories possibly being multiple realities about the same staircase.
After a short break, Ian T’s moving piece about an ill-fated meal of spaghetti bolognaise with his dad and (yet another strange echo) a central theme of parental dementia.
It really is quite extraordinary how such a simple, three word title, “All Mixed Up” with no further guidance from Kay, led to so many overlapping themes. This does tend to happen at ThreadMash and I find that aspect of the overlap fascinating.
Geraldine read us some fragmentary musings, which are on their way to being a set of elegiac meditations on her experiences during the pandemic.
Kay instead reminisced about her time in New York in the late 1980s. Part confessional…
…we learnt that it was Kay who has denied us UK citizens the Marathon Bar, helping rebrand that Mars product as Snickers. Kay is also to blame for M&Ms in the UK, apparently – I shall find forgiveness for Kay in my heart eventually – but not yet…
…partly an ode to Dorothy Parker and partly Kay’s own poetic efforts from that time.
Last but not least was David Wellbrook’s sprawling sequel to his previous post-modern story about a chancer named Myrtle (or is she named Candice?) about whom David is writing rather sordid stories…or is she writing David instead? We met some new characters this time, including Lady Kumquat, the infeasibly young wife of an elderly Knight of the Realm. We were also introduced to an infeasibly hilly part of Norfolk named Bishop’s Knuckle.
There was plenty of time for discussion of our various pieces and general chat too.
As always it was a superb evening. Whether virtual or face-to-face I always get a boost from these ThreadMash events.
And finally…
…just in case the trusty WordPress engine fails to connect my “forty years on” diary piece about Grandma Anne’s last few days and the aftermath of her demise, here and below is a link to that piece.
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