It releases you from a life predicated on the future, which doesn’t exist yet anyway.
We drink in silence; there are always enough pearls of wisdom.
His sons come back in. My godson has found the skull of a wood pigeon and one of a rat and empty snail shells. He holds the fragile bones up to the light and looks in fascination at the curves in the gossamer-thin bone.
I can see the little globes where their brains were, he says.
He is all eyes, my father, in the square in front of the cathedral and the theatre.
I haven’t been in town for at least five years, he says.
While we were parking, the disabled card lying on the dashboard caught my eye. I turned it over and suddenly saw a photo of her, taken when she was still well.
Her broad smile, her bright-eyed look. And the pride in her make-up.
I turned the card over again quickly. Seeing her as she was before the illness struck is unbearable. The way she looks today is equally unbearable.
We hang motionless, impotent, between what we don’t want to remember and what we can’t bear to see.
In the restaurant he says: I’ve acted stronger than I am. And too often I’ve unburdened myself with An.
I say: no one expects you to be strong. No one expects you to be able to handle this.
It’s quite something, he says, leaving someone behind whom you’ve known for fifty years.
You’re not leaving her behind. No one expects you to be her nurse. You’re entrusting her care to others, so that you can be there for her better.
The waitress comes and refills our glasses. Father and son? she asks. I thought so. I do that regularly, go out for a meal with my son. Then for all I care the rest can be blown sky-high.
Precious moments, she says.
We smile.
I think: everything’s already been blown sky-high.
In the past, whenever I wanted to give her a kiss, a sheet of blotting paper always came between us.
Child of parents who were ashamed. Of themselves, of history, of what people thought. The affection which a granny would generally have expressed with all her limbs in cuddling her grandchildren was put by her mother into the cakes she baked for us on birthdays. Pleasure palaces of flaky pastry, whipped cream, biscuit and chocolate. Whenever we had flu her father would stand snivelling by our sickbeds, because each time anew he thought our last hour had struck. Thoroughly nice man, but never affectionate.
When they gave us pocket money for the summer fair, they couldn’t help adding: don’t waste the money. What they meant was: make sure that we don’t have to be even more ashamed.
My mother, daughter of shame.
Always that clumsy, half-mocking laugh when I tried to press my lips on her cheek. For a long time I cursed that shame, which she mixed in with our food, and its shadow side, self-reproach.
Now I lift her up out of the chair in the day-care centre. Veerle releases the table top and I lift her up.
Her feet thrash against my shins, and when I let her down she perches jauntily on my toes.
She is restless, as almost always these days. She wants to run in all directions at once. Until Veerle says: we’re going home, Mum. Home to Dad.
She calms down instantly. She more or less flops against me, with her head against my ribcage. I hear her breathing calming, I feel it in the threads of my shirt.
I give her a fond kiss on the forehead.
We’ve been expecting you for some time, says the lady from admissions, after offering my sister and me a chair in her office. But we don’t force anything. We never do that. The request must come from the family.
I saw also that your father was completely at the end of his tether.
The man had no strength at all left. Nothing left.
It still affects me to see a grown man, twenty years older than me, cry. Believe me.
He had absolutely no reserves left, your father.
Of course he felt guilty.
I said: we’ll try it for a week or so. Then we’ll see.
Now he realizes it’s the right thing too. For him too. But if she is admitted permanently in a little while, it will all come back.
There will always be guilt feelings, believe me.
She likes walking, your mother. Group activities are not for her. But she likes stepping out.
So every day, weather permitting, one of the duty staff goes walking with her.
We also put her in the multi-sensory bath. We close the curtains. The nurses light pleasantly scented candles, because you have to keep stimulating people with dementia. Especially pleasant, direct sensory stimuli.
That relaxes her.
As long as she can walk, your mother.
So everything there is, I always say, is still there.
If she moves in here permanently she’ll be put in a family group. We don’t believe in leaving people with dementia sitting in their rooms. If you had to sit looking at four walls, you might not be so happy either.
We have a movement therapist here, we ensure that our guests don’t stiffen up. And there are ergotherapists. Yes, there are still lots of things you can do together with people with dementia. In short bursts, depending on their ability to concentrate.
Sometimes there is cooking in the unit. The smell of fresh vegetable soup often makes them curious. Some lend a hand in chopping up the vegetables. Others don’t. We won’t be able to do it with your mother. But, anyway, if she’s there, she’s sure to pick up on the life around her.
I sometimes come into the unit when they’re cooking and tend to get angry because nothing is happening. Because the guests are not responding.
But then the therapists say: that’s what you think.
Smelling, they say, sniffing the smell of fresh soup, is also doing something.
We throw parties regularly here. It may be that when you come to visit her the central entrance hall is closed off and you have to enter by the side door. For example a couple of times a year we organize a marathon walk. We follow a route round the park.
It’s touching to see how much they enjoy it. There is still a group feeling among those people, however ill they may be. It’s natural, just as with us, and you should see their pleasure when they reach the finish line all together.
Then we close off the big entrance hall and give a party with drinks and snacks.
That’s the right way, I think.
Parties are important.
Don’t forget that.
Your mother is at present in category C/D. That is the highest grade. Needs constant care, and has dementia.
It’s a miracle that all of you and your father have held out for so long.
I’ll admit her as soon as there’s a place free. We have a hundred and sixty-two beds. We’re completely full, and there’s a long waiting list.
It’s not as nice working here as when I started thirty years ago.
Then I had perhaps forty admissions a year to arrange. That was always a pleasure. Now I have a hundred and thirty per year. I have to disappoint a lot of people.
It’s a huge problem. I sometimes wonder whether our politicians realize.
But I do what I can.
We go to collect her, my sister and I. In the day room she is sitting in her chair by the window. She constantly purses her lips and relaxes them again.