This is a wonderful book. It tells simply but powerfully the heart-wrenching but often amusing story of a middle-aged divorcee who moves back in with his mother, a retired seamstress, and quickly realises that she is starting to show signs of dementia.
The author’s other aim is to highlight the lack of funding for research into Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia. As he tartly comments: “In modern Britain, more money is spent on launching a new aftershave than on researching Alzheimer’s disease”. He also makes the important point that the family members who take care of a loved one with dementia are actually more affected than the person involved. As he puts it: “While family members are drawn into the labyrinthine tragedy and may become an actor in the drama, the patient themselves remains blissfully unaware of the emotional turmoil they are causing in the outside universe.”
When Martin takes his mother, Rose, to see a consultant, it becomes apparent that she’s not living in the present. While it is already 2002, she thinks the war’s still on, that Margaret Thatcher is still Prime Minister, whereas by then it was Tony Blair, and that it’s April, when it’s August. It’s her GP who explains to Martin what is happening in his mother‘s mind: “Imagine you’re standing at one end of a long carpet. The end nearest to you represents the present and the other end represents your mother‘s childhood. As we begin to roll up the rug, the memories inside the rug are erased and lost forever and her reality slips backwards in time. The more we roll up the rug, the further back in time she has to travel to find a point in her life that she remembers.”
One disconcerting feature of dementia is the strange behaviour exhibited by many sufferers. When Martin goes to fetch a bath towel from the airing cupboard one day, he finds that the top one has been neatly cut into 12 equal strips. When challenged about this, his mother blames his aunt Peggy, even though she has been dead for five years. While her action initially appears totally senseless, Martin eventually realises that she is merely continuing a once familiar task: in her own mind she is still at work, still cutting material to make curtains and bedding. Martin admits that it took him a long time to understand this.
His mother also experiences all sorts of delusions, including imagining that regular concerts are being held in her lounge by a six-piece Irish folk band, whom she insists on offering tea and biscuits to. Most striking of all, she often crouches down near the radiator and appears to talk to it. This becomes a recurring leitmotif in the story, although it is not until his mother’s life is nearing its end that Martin finally understands the meaning of this little drama.
One day he suddenly notices that his mother is getting very thin. Looking in the kitchen cupboards, he finds that every packet, tin and box of food is months out of date. When he empties everything into a black bin liner, his mother sobs and says: “You’re going to starve me to death. Wait till your father gets home – he’ll have something to say about this!” Martin remembers that this is exactly what his mother used to say when he had been naughty as a child.
Because he works full-time, Martin cannot be at home with his mother during the day and this leads to her being taken advantage of by unscrupulous tradesmen. One day he comes home to find two young men ripping down the guttering from the front of the house. When questioned they say his mother has agreed to have new soffits, facias and guttering fitted. Outraged, Martin rings the local Trading Standards Office and, fortunately, while he is still arguing with the men, an officer turns up and tells them in no uncertain terms that they had no right to take advantage of an old lady with Alzheimer’s and that their “contract” for £2500 is null and void. Even so, it still costs Martin £650 to have the damage they had caused put right.
As well as distressing episodes like this, there are also many amusing incidents in the book. A planned trip on the train to go shopping in Birmingham ends up with Rose inadvertently spending the day at a Franchise Exhibition at the NEC with a charming older gentleman who tells Martin, when he finally tracks his mother down, that his wife had died of Alzheimer’s. And then Bruno enters their life! Bruno is an affectionate but unruly dog that Martin takes in to help out a friend. Bruno quickly attaches himself to Rose, not least because she constantly feeds him titbits. After one spectacular food heist, Martin takes Bruno to obedience classes, but his unrestrained libido causes instant chaos and he has to be removed within 5 minutes of arriving.
When Rose starts locking him out of the house almost daily, Martin realises it is no longer safe for her to live at home and starts looking round for a suitable care home. His research soon leads him to realise how variable is the standard of care in residential homes and also how lonely and isolated old people can become when taken out of their local community. As he says: “If an old person breaks a hip in a fall and goes into a regular hospital, on average they will receive three family visits per day. If the same old person is admitted to a care home, they will not receive three family visits per month.”
Unhappy with the standard of care in the first home, Martin moves her to another home, which turns out to be everything the first home wasn’t. The staff are welcoming, the care focused on the needs of the individual and Rose settles in there almost straightaway.
Entering her room one day, Martin finds her kneeling by the radiator, talking quietly and offering up chocolates, before popping them in her mouth. He gently asks her what she is doing and this is the moment when the secret of the girl in the radiator is finally revealed. It is one of the most moving episodes you are ever likely to read anywhere, as Martin hugs his mother and they sob quietly together for several minutes. Rose goes to bed soon after and Martin returns home to his new partner, “his soul in shreds”.
Unfailingly honest, and happy and sad in equal measure, this book is an absolute gem. Strange to relate, once you have started it, you will find it difficult to put down. If you only ever read one book telling the real-life story of someone caring for a loved one with dementia, then make it this one: The Little Girl in the Radiator.
