My intentions were clear and good.
I was only trying to talk to my great grandmother.
It was my last resort - anything to get a smile from gramps.
He hadn't made so much as a peep since he moved into residential care. It's not that we didn't want to care for him, it's that we didn't know how to. We couldn't just lock him away on the off chance that he might go for a wander and get lost like he did when he lived by himself. It would have been cruel - practically imprisoning him for having a disease he can't control.
Fifty miles outside of the city was a village designed around Alzheimer patients around gramp's age. Every single inch of it was a throwback to the late nineteen twenties and we thought he'd feel safe there, make friends there and just live out the gradual brain failure in peace and comfort.
I don't know if it was because the village was based on another culture's experience of the twenties or if his flashbacks to his childhood were making him feel sadder than he'd be if we'd kept him with us but he just deflated. It was like being there was speeding up the disease and killing him too fast for us to bear.
I just wanted his final few years to be happy and I thought that if he heard his mother then he'd settle in better, maybe have a few rose-tinted childhood memories come back and generally be at peace. It may have taken a few months to do but I'd tracked down his childhood home - where she'd died of cancer in her own bed - and spent three days solid asking questions and recording the silence to see if she'd reply.
I never expected the dead to be so coherent, never thought she'd want to follow be back to see him but she did. She even explained to me how I could help free her from the house and place her in a feather so she could move easier when we got to gramps.
On my last visit I told him all about this, put the headphones on him and let him listen to his mother's voice for the first time in over eighty years. As soon as I pressed play he looked worried, the worry gradually morphing into terror as he spoke for the first time since he'd moved out.
"That's not my mother."
I was only trying to talk to my great grandmother.
It was my last resort - anything to get a smile from gramps.
He hadn't made so much as a peep since he moved into residential care. It's not that we didn't want to care for him, it's that we didn't know how to. We couldn't just lock him away on the off chance that he might go for a wander and get lost like he did when he lived by himself. It would have been cruel - practically imprisoning him for having a disease he can't control.
Fifty miles outside of the city was a village designed around Alzheimer patients around gramp's age. Every single inch of it was a throwback to the late nineteen twenties and we thought he'd feel safe there, make friends there and just live out the gradual brain failure in peace and comfort.
I don't know if it was because the village was based on another culture's experience of the twenties or if his flashbacks to his childhood were making him feel sadder than he'd be if we'd kept him with us but he just deflated. It was like being there was speeding up the disease and killing him too fast for us to bear.
I just wanted his final few years to be happy and I thought that if he heard his mother then he'd settle in better, maybe have a few rose-tinted childhood memories come back and generally be at peace. It may have taken a few months to do but I'd tracked down his childhood home - where she'd died of cancer in her own bed - and spent three days solid asking questions and recording the silence to see if she'd reply.
I never expected the dead to be so coherent, never thought she'd want to follow be back to see him but she did. She even explained to me how I could help free her from the house and place her in a feather so she could move easier when we got to gramps.
On my last visit I told him all about this, put the headphones on him and let him listen to his mother's voice for the first time in over eighty years. As soon as I pressed play he looked worried, the worry gradually morphing into terror as he spoke for the first time since he'd moved out.
"That's not my mother."
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