Day 1,044 in the Nanny June Care Home

The One Where She Lost Us

Her room had given us privacy; peace and quiet and a place where we could reclaim a little bit of our past selves. We would play Nanny June’s favourite music, surrounded by photos of family and eat our cakes from Greggs with the Mini Morries playing on the floor. A false reality capturing a more normal illusion of ‘normal’. I could do without it being taken away by circumstance in the care home.

But as the stench of urine continues, today we sat again in the communal lounge with a tv blaring at us from the corner and one resident circling us trying to tidy us away and another resident (a big angry man) telling the staff that he just wanted a coffee and that they could PISS. OFF.

Loudly.

Three times.

He also got violent at the staff.

As a result of this incident, the Mini Morries will not see Nanny June again now until we have our privacy back. It is not appropriate and not ok for them to see that. And prompted another big chat in the car afterwards about appropriate behaviour from adults.

But back to the deafening volume of Twixtmas tv being too loud to permit everyday conversation and though we tried it was hard. I tried to find a remote control or any available buttonage but it was people proof. Even finding a member of staff to implore them to turn it down was impossible.

The noise and disruption was damaging my own neural processing ability and my brain synapses were working hard just to fire.

So I shouldn’t be so very surprised that this was the first time Nanny June didn’t recall my name. Clues and prompts from me didn’t help and when she searched her mental library of names that she lands on automatically, she got mine - but it was nothing to do with me - the person sat in front of her.

I cannot convey how gutted I am and close to tears I was, and still am. That is the first time I have become forgotten and it hurts as much as I knew it would.

This is also the first day I found she did not know her own name. I feel that there is love here somewhere - on a level somewhere I didn’t know existed; her and I are tied so tightly together and so inextricably bound that we do not stop where the other ends, maybe like all maternal ties, however broken or frayed. Her losing herself happens at the same time as she loses me.

If this were a science fiction movie she would flicker in and out and start to look like a hologram, before flickering back into the communal, beige room.

The Mini Morries bustle about showing Nanny June photos on the ipad and give hurried, random and brief explanations for irrelevant context. For this visit they are all dressed in pretty new Christmas clothes from their other Grandma and they do look very scrumptious. Nanny June commented on how fast children grow and especially LOVED the outfit modelled by Mini Morrie #2. Frustrated that she couldn’t articulate this heart swell for her granddaughter, after stammers and false starts Nanny June settled on “She’s cute... ALL the way around”.

You’re not wrong Nanny June, you’re not wrong. She so is.

I tried again to get Nanny June to give me her name. “One” she says. “It’s one. No, it’s not - but it has definitely got a one in it”.

And as residents wander to the sound of the television that keeps blaring, it is an awkwardly harsh environment which heralds our slow descent into the dark days that wait ahead.

There is an ebb and flow with human beings as well as dementia, and I live in hope that next time we can create a better environment to tempt the memories back and buy some more time with each other.

But dementia is an island and Nanny June is marooned and my boat can’t get back to the shore and I know in my soul that Nanny June sees me floating away and can’t get me back and knows she is alone and there is nothing either of us can do.