April 23, 2008: where am I again?

Healthy living Blog

Carer Diary

Where are we again?

Marianne Talbot's mother has no sense of direction but, says Marianne, for once the Alzheimer's disease she suffers from may not be the culprit

Whenever mum and I socialise with people who don’t know mum their first question is always: ‘Do you live around here?’

This means that mum is stumped right away. She has no idea where she lives. Or where she is. Or where she’s been. All she knows is that she is here (with no idea where ‘here’ is).

You might think this is the Alzheimer’s. But mum never did have a sense of place. I always thought this a touching sign of self-esteem: I am here, nothing else matters. But this might be because I share mum’s place-blindness.

This handicap has never bothered us. We always had fun together wherever we were going. We used to talk and laugh so much that, when finally we wondered where we were, we’d discover we were miles out of our way, often completely lost.

One day we went walking in Alderley Edge, a beautiful spot near where mum used to live. We were talking about life, the universe and everything, until we suddenly realised it was getting dark and we had no idea where we were.

When I say ‘no idea’ I really mean no idea. We didn’t even know in which direction the car was. It was really rather nasty. We managed to keep cheerful by talking of the cave we’d sleep in. But we were hugely relieved to find the car just as darkness fell in earnest.

Then there was the occasion we set off for IKEA in, I think, Warrington. Anyway somewhere neither of us knew, but near enough, we thought, to make the drive worthwhile.

Well, it probably was reasonably near. But again we got talking and again we found ourselves lost. This time in far less pleasant surroundings. We were on a motorway and, we thought, going in the wrong direction. We found our way off it, got back on and then found we really were going in the wrong direction. Too late. We were stuck for miles.

We got to IKEA. But it was closed.

Mobile phones now make it impossible to get comprehensively lost. I recently cycled to Woodstock with a friend. This usually takes 50 minutes. An hour and a half in, therefore, I realised something was wrong.

My sister, when I used my mobile to ask where we were, hooted with laughter. Judy has a most un-Talbot-like feel for where she is. My friend, who had thought I knew where I was going, looked on in bemusement.

But mobiles came too late for mum. Anyway she enjoyed getting lost. She claimed she met some of the nicest people when she asked for directions.

But people always fell over themselves to help mum. They still do.

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