The World According to Autumn…

Sep 29

‘DEMETIA & SPAM’

Autumn we call that a stage in life too… It has been a hell of a year so far! It’s quite poignant for me as I have been dealing with some of the elder members of my family, some of which are just forgetful and others suffering from memory loss or dementia.

Yesterday, my phone rings again, I am on the phone to someone else, but this won’t stop him. I flick the red ‘ring-off’ button and carry on my phone call. And the phone goes again, I ignore it, only for another bling to go on my phone and it is a text telling me I have a voice mail message. The fourth message in the last ten minutes, I ignore it and carry on with my call even though I am distracted. When I finish my legitimate call, I look at the call log and see they are all from the same person, from him, an elderly relative. I no longer listen to the answer phone messages as they are always the same…. ‘Hello…. Hello… Natalie is that you…. Hello’ … I just delete them off. Depending on what time of the day it is, I either put the kettle on or open the fridge and pour myself a glass of white wine, on this occasion, before I finish pouring the glass the phone rings again…. I pick it up ….

‘Hello…. Hello… Natalie is that you…. Hello’ …. I respond that it is me, but I think this time they are not sure …. So we have to go through a few more Hello’s until he is satisfied with the fact he is now talking to the real me. I have stopped saying to them - just leave one message and I will get back to you… Because they don’t remember - so there is no point…. They are like an insistent child that wants a biscuit because they know they will get one if you are on the phone, and he is the same, he wants to talk to me now, so he just keeps ringing until he gets an answer from me.

When I ask how I can help him, it foxes him and he has a little giggle to himself, ‘Now what did I want? What did I ring you for? …. Two ticks …. Two ticks.. it will come to me… Hang on a sec Natalie … ‘ And there is silence whilst he thinks about it…. The silence on the phone suddenly throws him after a bit …. ‘Hello…. Hello…. Are you still there Natalie … Hello… ‘ I reassure them that I am… ‘Oh that is nice of you to call Natalie, how are you?’ Whatever emergency he had has gone and he is just happy to have a chat. This ‘chat’ is on a loop as it goes around and starts from the beginning again and the same information is repeated. He is at the moment, totally fascinated by how old he is… ‘How old am I Natalie? .. I forget… ‘

‘You are 87’

‘Good Gracious… Well that is a good age… I am an ‘old boy’ … I’ll be … I’ll be …. ahhhmmm…’

‘90 in three years time.’ I know he likes this conversation …

‘That is good, Natalie .. I think I have got another good ten years - ‘innings’. I think and I will go and live in Venice… Did you know I was going to live in Venice? I have to write things down now .. I forget … How old am I?

I don’t tell him he is repeating himself, I just start back at the beginning again, which seems to keep him happy. I have learned this type of memory loss, dementia, for the most part the person is the same, if anything this ‘old boy’ is nicer, kinder than he used to be, but something in his brain has just put him on repeat. Having listened as required for a while I find a reason to come to the end of the call and that is that for the time being, unless he forgets that he called me and the whole thing starts off again, which is happening more frequently. Of course it is very sad and must be very frightening for them, but mostly he does not remember. Thank Goodness. We can hit on a subject that he enjoys and we can have a really good laugh - I like hearing him laugh... I am not sure I could cope with it .. If he were sad… Occasionally when he is a bit more, shall we say ‘testy’ … Hammering home his point with gusto on the usual loop, I just try and placate and agree with him, recently he had the audacity to tell me crossly - ‘You already said that Natalie!’ .. And I have to apologise for repeating myself!!

At the moment - I don’t only have one relative with this issue, I have acquired a few! They are all at different level and stage and all require quite different handling. My eccentric aunt, truth be told … I have quite a few! She refuses to move out of her enormous house which is unsuitable for her and is falling into rack and ruin, she has annoyed her own children with her ‘curious’ and unacceptable behaviour so much that they refuse to talk to her, so for the last ten years and more she only has me to speak with, outside of social services who think that she might become a danger to herself. Her obsession is with filing any bit of paper that she can find in this big house, she has lived there for about 25 years and she and her husband had a habit of keeping every scrap of paper, her husband has long since died, but she insists that she must file all his papers in order; some papers date back to the 1980’s. I try and tell her to just throw them away, but she won’t have it - she is convinced that the are of historic value and that her children will want to read them at some stage. I can promise you they won’t.

Along with keeping bits of random paper, she cuts out articles from her beloved daily paper and places them in the piles around the part of the house she is living in, their are paper stacks everywhere, in the hall, in the rooms, open the cupboards and you will find even more, God forbid there is ever a fire! She believes that the future recipient of ‘said’ pile of paper will find the article very informative - She believes that she is the only one with any ‘proper’ intellect and infantilises anyone else with her superior knowledge, which is another reason her children won’t talk to her. She can be exasperating…

Fairly recently she sent me a newspaper cutting about the actress Beryl Reed and actor Hugh Paddick, she insisted that my husband was related to him - ‘He must be related Natalie … It is the same surname … You must know … Paddick … Paddick .. It is the same surname!’ I tell her that they are not related, she starts getting quite cross and so in the end .. I just either put my foot down and change the subject or I agree with her and she seems satisfied, and tells me with a giggle that is the replica of my Grandmothers, ‘I told you so .. Natalie..’. The phone calls can go on for hours and if I try and get off the phone she will hold fast and try and find another subject in which to clutch onto the never ending conversation.

Social services are another one of her bug bears - she loathes them as they are in her ‘lofty’ opinion like everyone else ‘below her intellect’ and she can’t understand why they won’t help her with filing her piles of paper - ‘after all Natalie what else have the got to do? … If they keep turning up they might as well do some work!’ Needless to say this type of approach does not endear her to them. She has ways of dealing with them if she is bored of them being in her house; at the end of last year her small fridge gave up the ghost and she left the food in it and got another new fridge, when she got around to dealing with the defunct fridge the food had rotted and the smell was disgusting, so she removed the food and kept the fridge in the kitchen, but shut, and for many months if the social service lady irritated her too much she would open the fridge door in the full knowledge that the smell was so revolting the lady would have to leave. Mad … But I have to admit rather canny!

Over the summer social services rang me to complain that my aunt had behaved very badly! It turned out that she had been told that the water board were coming to her house to undertake some vital work as there was a serious leak in her grounds that needed mending. I had reminded her of the date so that there would be no confusion. However on the day, the workmen turned up they found her sunbathing in the nude! The lady next door was called over and she tried to persuade my aunt to put her clothes back on… She was having none of it… It was after all a lovely sunny day! My phone went and I was asked to tell my aunt to put her clothes on so that the men could work - unimpeded!

She was loving all the fuss - ‘Natalie it is fine .. I have put my top back on and I am talking to the men from behind my bush!’ She knew exactly what she was saying, but pretending to be all innocent as she conducted the call from behind the Rhododendron bush. I was quite busy that day - so I sharply told her to put her clothes on and eventually, some normality prevailed, and the workmen finally go back to work - Hopefully not to traumatised! My aunt likes to take her clothes off, she has been doing it all her life. One late night conversation with her she suddenly told me that, I should always put a piece of Blu-Tac over the camera on my laptop… I asked her why? ‘So the Russians can’t spy on you when you are in the nude on your computer!’ ….

‘I am sorry??? But why would I be in the nude at my computer talking to Russians?’

‘Natalie …. You should have been around in the 60’s everyone was taking their clothes off then! And the Russians spy on you via your camera'! They are always looking at me!’ I tried to tell her that the Russians actually don’t spy on people like us, they are not interested … I mean what would they be looking for on an old ladies laptop? But she wasn’t having any of it and I agreed to get the Blu-Tac out!

There have been some really challenging times this year, when one elderly relative signed over his Power of Attorney, Will and a Trust dead to a scammer! It was utterly terrifying to deal with and I only found out by coincidence what had happened and had to fight tooth and nail to get all the documents back. Or dealing with my dear aunt, who is convinced that her telephone company, have employed a bunch of teenagers who’s only job it is, is to cut her off, there is no point telling her that a big corporation would not be interested in her telephone account, she won’t have it. I keep telling her it is because she has not set up her direct debit correctly, but she won’t have that either and she is cut off again and again. So in desperation and fear she called 999, asked for the police and an ambulance, both of which blue lighted to her property only to find a frightened old lady who wanted them to put her phone and internet back on for her. Eventually after much negotiation on my part with the local council I managed arranged for her to have a alert button that she could wear around her neck if she had any further issues, this would alert the local authority that she was in trouble, she like the idea when I first discussed it with her, that was until it was organised and OF COURSE - she refused to have it! ‘Natalie I am not ready for something like that!’ It is exasperating!

My mother, who is in her middle 80’s and I am glad to say does not suffer with any illnesses, However she has always been more than a bit ‘whacky’, but is full of good advice to me on how I should be dealing with all these aged relatives, ‘Natalie the only kindness, would be for ‘them’ all to quietly pass away in their sleep… that is the what you should do!’ I don’t think she means murder them, but I can never really tell with my mother! My mother completely disregards that she is of a similar age to them and is in denial of her own age, if my own age is ever mentioned, she will argue that I am not the age I am, ‘Don’t be ridiculous Natalie - YOU ARE NOT THAT AGE!’ I have given up arguing with her over my age, I realise that if she takes on board my age that would mean she would have to calculate her own age - ‘AND SHE IS NOT HAVING THAT!’

I did have a curious conversation with my mother over the phone this week. I was telling her that one of my elderly charges had somehow got hold of counterfeit stamps and I had to pay an extra fee of £2.50 for a document that they had sent me. My conversation was distracted by my mother using her mobile phone, she is not tech savvy at all, so will walk around whilst using it and it keeps cutting in and out. ‘Mum, are you moving? You keep cutting in and out … Stay in the same place … Please!’ Her response was my mother classic!! ‘Of course I have not moved .. Natalie! I just walked into another room, I would tell you if I have moved!’ I don’t bother to respond, ‘ There always seems to be something wrong with your phone Natalie! Whenever I use my mobile…. Your phone does not work, you should get it mended!’ I carry on with my story about the counterfeit stamps, ‘I wonder mum, where did they get counterfeit stamps from?’ My mother has now lost interest in this conversation, for her it is boring, it is about old people and not something more exiting. ‘What are you saying Natalie? What are you talking about?’

‘Counterfeit stamps - Mum… ‘

‘Counterfeit Spam - Natalie?’

‘Stamps … Mum … Stamps … Can you hear me?’

‘I can’t hear you Natalie … I have told you, you need to get your phone sorted out..’

‘No mum … Can you move back into the other room there is better reception… And I am talking about … S…T…A…M…P…S….Stamps!!’ She thankfully moves back into the other room … ‘Can you hear me now mum?’

‘Yes Natalie, I can hear you now … Have you changed your phone, it is a much better line? So why have they got counterfeit Spam, where did they get it? We used to have it in the war…’

I know that I should not get irritated, but I do…. I have to re-explain that I am not talking about Spam, but Stamps and by the time I have explained it to her … I really wished I hadn’t started … Sometimes after a day of it I start questioning my own cognisant behaviour. Me and my husband have become hyperalert, to any of our own language or memory lapses ... I sometimes think it is me that is going mad ….

Someone I am not responsible for is …. My eldest uncle 94, who has full blown dementia and is in a home in Australia, his devoted elderly wife goes in to see him each week. One week when she was unwell and did not want to take any germs into the home, being tech savvy enough she set up a zoom call to my uncle. The nurses wheeled in the large computer screen on a trolley and set it in front of him, my aunt happily spoke to him via the screen covering various topics of joint interest including the day to day minutia of life, including news about their children and grandchildren. My uncle watched the screen with interest, his eyes widening at times in response to what he was seeing on the big TV screen in front of him; having covered all the general points of interest she thought she would bring the conversation to a close. She blew him a big kiss and said ‘Good Bye my love for now… ’ My uncle who had not said anything for the entire Zoom conversation eyes bulged in outrage. ‘How dare you Madame …. I am a happily married man!’ He turned to the nurses, ‘that woman on the telly is making a pass at me!’….