Dementia Diary: Time for a holiday before Mum forgets us forever

It is early last summer. Ireland is anticipating liberation from lockdown. I am researching Airbnbs. I have bossily corralled my siblings into a holiday. Us and Mum, I say.

It is important, I urge, “before she forgets us forever”.

I am determined to make it count, to cram as many of us into a house as we can, so that she can enjoy all of our company all together one last time.

But there are challenging criteria to meet in the identification of a holiday home that’s perfect for Mum. It must have a view for her to ponder, a broad skyscape or an ocean that swells with storm or settles under sun. Views are important; they seem to still confusion, bestow a positive focus as the ability to ‘do’ grows less. It must be sizeable. Must sleep a minimum of eight as family members come and go. (And it must be affordable). It must be close to the shops; access to a Tesco for groceries and to a park to get Mum out for a walk are equally important.

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Airbnb narrows options as my wants stack up, as I slide the price bar down.

“No steep stairs,” my brother reminds me.

My mother is inclined to stumble. Her poor vision on top of diminishing spatial awareness means her navigation is getting worse. When we walk with her we walk tethered to her side, like tugs, guiding her away from obstacles and out of the path of oncoming pedestrian traffic.

“How steep are they, those steps?” my brother asks when I send him the link to a house that is perfectly located, perfectly adequate in size and only a nip above our collective budget.

I contact the host: “Sorry, another question: How steep are the stairs?”

Not especially, comes the response “but they are narrow”.

“Make sure there’s a handrail, then,” says my brother, an afterthought.

“Is there a handrail?” I ask the host in a third (or is it a fourth?) email. I can tell, from increasingly abrupt answers, that she is getting fed up with my interrogation: No.

I strike the house from my list.

Beach houses were at a premium last summer. Everybody holidaying in Ireland in case governments forced another lockdown and they couldn’t get into or, worse, out of Greece or Italy or France.

“Have you asked about the cancellation policy in case something happens?” my sister prods.

Like what? Something like what happens?

“Like Mum gets sick.”

Or there’s another lockdown.

I ask the agent at the cottage rental business: “What happens if I have to cancel?”

I tell him I am anxious that another wave of Covid-19 may pose obstacles that mean we cannot take our reservation up.

He says there is provision for such an event.

What would he say if I told him the reason I might have to cancel is that one of our party refuses to come because she has forgotten who we all are?

I add a note to my list: “Check travel insurance for cancellation policies.”

Sometimes Mum wanders at night. Sometimes her nocturnal meandering is soft and gentle, a ghost, drifting silently from room to room. But sometimes, when she forgets to turn her bedside lamp on, even though I have laced the switch so that it’s right beside her pillow, she crashes about in the dark. I have woken and found her folded cold on the floor.

I strike every double-story cottage from my search.

I Google bungalows by the sea.

I find one.

It has two king-size beds.

“Could we replace one of the kings with a pair of twins?” I ask the host.

But I have already asked him about how close the cottage is to the beach. I scrutinised the photographs of the bathroom and asked about shower access. Mum cannot step into a bath to shower. And she cannot heave herself up out of a tub. Nor can we lift her from one. Her ablution requirements are specific. I want the host to understand them without spelling out how compromised she is. I do not want him to turn us down because he thinks my mother is an incontinent geriatric. I have asked about his cancellation policy, the view and whether there are any steps at all in the property.

No, he says. No what? No, he cannot replace a king with twins.

He is tired of me with my window shopping. Plenty of people are asking about beach houses this summer. He can do without my tiresome inquisition.

Then it dawns on me. And I am struck later that I didn’t think of this before: Mum will remember nothing of her holiday within days of taking it.

She will remember only the hour she is in, who is talking to her now, who is enjoying a mug of tea with her now and what she’s eating for lunch now.

Her past will go the way of all memories; her days will dissolve to nothingness.

And suddenly I know: this holiday is for us; this holiday is the last we might have with a mother who might know us.

It is our memories of it that count.

And so we stay at home, at my sister’s. Her little house expands as elastic. Sometimes it is stretched to bursting point, but we always manage to fit everybody in. There is no charge for extra beds. Young bodies sleep in long-limbed tangles on sofas at night as grown-up grandchildren come and go. I watch twentysomethings and teens play cards with their grandmother, sharing a hand, giving a hand: “Well done Gran!” I notice they all know exactly how she likes her tea. My sister’s usual supermarket is minutes away; we have mapped the aisles a million times before. There is no time-wasting.

There is no sea. Nor view. But the familiarity of the terrain means we have the confidence — the courage, the energy — to navigate the changing topography of mum’s mind. And so the holiday is a roaring success.

Keeping Mum: A dementia diary

1. ‘I forgot you were my daughter’
2. Time for a holiday
3. Is depression key?
4. ‘Cures’ are too hard to resist
5. Mum is aghast when I say we’re her daughters
6. Mum remembers nobody
7. Mum only has today
8. Everything about my mother is shrinking

Instagram: @anthea_rowan