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She is, variously, 72, 99, 102. Or, to my sister on the phone last week, “I am 1,000 years old.”
Today is my mum’s birthday. She’s 82. Except I've lied about the date.
“Happy Birthday, Mum,” I say.
"Is it my birthday?"
It is, I say. “Do you know what the date is?”
Of course, she says, “If it’s my birthday, it must be the 9th of June.” Then, because I’m clearly daft, “I’d never forget that.”
But it’s not the 9th. On the 9th, I was at the memorial service of an old friend of mine, of Mum’s. You do your best. You split your time. You lie about dates when it doesn’t matter.
Because it does.
"Whose memorial?" Mum wants to know. She remembers the name, she says, like she sometimes remembers mine—or, much more rarely, Dad’s.
Her paranoia is worse. I’ve said it before: Dementia is not a gently inclined slope to decrepitude, where with a subtle gradient you can acclimatise at every stage. It’s a series of deep and uneven steps. Each one jars.
This, this new madness, is shocking. “Shhhh,” she hisses, eyes round, finger to lips, “Or they might hear us.” They? In the roof, she says, indicating upward with a subtle inclination of her head.
There are interviews. One. Two. Three. There are questions. Four. Five. Six. There are no answers.
She is trying to make sense of the cat’s cradle cast of Alzheimer’s in her mind. Pushing all the lost pieces about trying to form a picture from the puzzle. And as I listen to her, in silence, for I don’t know what to say, as I witness her very real fear, her determination to realign chaos as order, I think of Russell Crowe playing John Nash in "A Beautiful Mind," a garden shed papered with press cuttings and webbed with string as schizophrenia crazy-paved his thoughts.
Later she will tell me, still seized by invisible terror, “I cried and I cried.” Why mum, what made you cry?
Because I wish I were not so unbrave. What has happened to my mother’s own beautiful mind?
I make her a birthday cake. Lemon. I hope the tart sweetness will pinch her tastebuds awake. Chocolate is too risky; she’ll toss it to the floor when she thinks we are not looking, where the Labrador will snaffle it up and then have an allergic reaction (and I can do without the drama). So lemon it is. I bake a sponge to her recipe.
Six ounces of everything, she used to say: “Six of butter, sugar, flour, and 3 eggs, or eight of everything to four eggs. Easy multiples. It’s as simple as that,” she smiled.
It was. Once.
And for the icing, to cinch the two halves together in a bitter-sweet kiss, I make lime curd using the double boiler mum gifted me decades ago and I remember how she stood over me as a child, helping me make curd for the home economics stand at the local agricultural show, how she behaved as if I’d won an Oscar when my jar of preserve was highly commended.
She will not remember. Like she does not remember the friend whose memorial I attended, nor any of the dozens of people there who asked, with kindly concern, “How’s your mum?” Like she often does not remember that Dad was Jim, Anthea her daughter.
What do I do with all the memories? With all the memories she cannot hold, cannot keep in her leaky-bucket brain? How will I keep them safe? If only I could bottle them as I did my curd, a waxed lid to protect them from decay.
I will keep them safe here, Ma. I will pin them here for posterity. For you.
Happy birthday, Mum.
