‘Yes, I know, she does most of the time. And most of the time sheisfine. But she is getting worse. I made her go to the GP of course, after the police incident. She would never have gone on her own steam.’
I was reeling, struggling to make sense of it, but my father sounded so calm.
‘You don’t seem very upset.’
‘Of course I’m upset. This is the worst possible news we could have had. But this isn’t about me. It’s about your mum, and what we’re going to do.’
‘You’re right, sorry.’ I paused. ‘So what are we going to do?’
‘Well that’s just it love.We’renot going to do anything. I am – I can look after her for the time being, while things are on an even keel. We’re fine, me and your mum, as long as I stay with her most of the time. So I’m going to go part-time at work. It’s not a big deal, I’ll be retiring in a few years anyway. But—’ He stopped and I heard him swallow. I knew this was just as hard for him as it was for me. ‘As your mum deteriorates she’s likely to be too bad to stay here with just me, and when that time comes we’ll need to think about some help.’
‘What sort of help?’
‘I don’t know yet. I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’ He swallowed again and my heart hurt at the thought of him having to deal with this all on his own. ‘I’m so sorry to be the bearer of such bad news love. But promise me something?’
‘What? Do you need me to come home?’
‘Absolutely not. In fact, I want you to promise me the exact opposite of that – that youwon’tcome rushing back here.’
‘But—’
‘Please love. Neither me nor your mum want this to be any harder than it needs to be, and that means you carrying on as normal, at least for now. These are the most important years of your life, and getting the actual diagnosis hasn’t changed anything, not yet.’
I didn’t speak for a few moments, letting my father’s words sink in.
‘How long have we got?’
He didn’t ask what I meant; he knew. ‘Nobody is really sure. The doctors are saying it’s progressing slowly but your guess is as good as mine. Which is why I don’t want you rushing home. We might need you soon, but we’re okay at the moment.’ His voice cracked and he coughed to cover it up.
‘Okay.’ I hesitated. ‘Dad?’
‘Yes?’
‘I love you.’
Dad let out an involuntary sound of surprise – we rarely expressed our feelings, just assumed the other one knew how we felt. ‘I love you too Reeny.’
After he’d hung up, I’d sat there for a while, my mind numb. How could my mum – my vital, playful, fun-loving mum – be losing herself to such a cruel disease? Surely the doctors had to have made some mistake. And yet I knew deep down they hadn’t.
It felt like my life had short-circuited and I longed to tell someone. Adam was away God only knew where with his band and wasn’t due to visit for a few days, and it wasn’t something I wanted to burden Rose or Sam with over the phone. That left Greg and, although we’d only known each other for a few months, he seemed like the natural choice so I’d sought him out. When I’d arrived at his room he’d been studying and I was about to leave, but he spotted me hovering in the half-open doorway and his face had lit up. He turned out to have been exactly what I’d needed that evening; he’d comforted me, listened to me, let me cry. He didn’t tell me stories of other people he knew who had dementia, he didn’t try and tell me that everything would be all right. He just let me get it off my chest, and sob. It was cathartic. Later that evening, when I’d been lying alongside him, squashed on top of the covers on his single bed, staring out of his tiny window at the dark night sky, a little thought started to settle and I realised I had no idea whether Adam would have been such a comfort. Sure, he would have listened, and would have done his best. But there was something about Greg that had been just what I’d needed in that moment. Perhaps that had been the night, months before we’d actually got together, that the foundations for us as a couple had been dug. Perhaps.
When I finally had gone home to see Mum a few weeks later, I’d been surprised – and relieved – at how normal she had been, for want of a better word. If I hadn’t have known about the diagnosis, I would never have suspected that there was anything wrong at all. By the end of the two days I did start to notice the odd thing – she’d forget where the teabags were, or get stuck trying to remember the word for ‘jacket’ or ‘newspaper’ ‘or ‘radio’. But they were small things, minor memory lapses, the kind you have when you’re tired or overwhelmed. Not dementia. Surely not. Not my mother, with her whole life ahead of her.
Not her.
And yet, as the months had passed, it had started to become clear that there really was something wrong. Conversations on the phone became harder as she’d sometimes forget who she was talking to, or ask me the same question she’d asked me just a moment before.
But while my heart broke to see this happening to Mum, Dad was a rock. I’d never doubted their love for each other, even if I’d never really understood it. How had two people so utterly different ever even met, let alone fallen in love? But they’d been happy, and when Mum had needed him the most, Dad had more than risen to the challenge.
‘Erin?’ I jumped at a voice beside me and realised my eyes were closed. I snapped them open to find my colleague Kate staring at me with a concerned look on her face. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘What? Yes, sorry.’ How long had I been sitting here, lost in the past? I glanced up at the clock. It was getting late.
‘Did you want to come for a drink? We’re just popping for a quick one as it’s the last day before Christmas.’
I shook my head. ‘No I’d better not. Got a few things to do before the big day, you know what it’s like.’
‘Okay, if you’re sure.’ She tilted her head to one side. ‘Are you sure you’re okay? You’re very pale.’
