Keeper: One House, Three Generations, and a Journey Into Alzheimer's Read Online Free PDF Page A

marking off the domestic world from the working one, separating peasant from gentry, keeping the bullocks and harvest workers in the adjoining fields out of the sight of the strolling, tea-taking, tennis-playing manor dwellers within.
    The house layout is ideal for an extended family. The kitchen has two doors: one into Morris and Nancy’s sitting room, and one into the rear corridor, where their bedroom and private bathroom were converted from two former maids’ rooms. Off their sitting room in the other direction is a small lobby, which leads into their private daytime bathroom. So Nancy and Morris have, in effect, their own suite of rooms, with only the kitchen shared, and even that is two-family friendly, having two stoves and two full-size tables along its double length. The original thinking was that Nancy and Morris would self-cater, up to a point and with our assistance. They were keen, Morris said, to have as much independence as possible. They brought what remained of their marital past in packing crates, everything that had survived successive years of downsizing: their 1960s crockery and pastel-colored kitchenware; tarnished silver cutlery with worn bone handles; old pillows, duvets, blankets, marital linens smelling of cedar wood; boxes of clothes and miscellaneous items dating back forty years; old toiletries, socks, lamp shades; wallets and watches, belts and business paper.
    With the exception of a daily excursion into the conservatory for coffee, their world has shrunk into this little sitting room by the kitchen: its two armchairs, a 1960s coffee table, a partner’s desk, a television, a dresser laden with ornaments—unused steak knives and ancient paperwork idling in its drawers—and a bookcase scantily furnished with photograph albums, thrillers, Reader’s Digests , the RAC Guide to Great Days Out , 1970s cookbooks whose pages are stuck together with cake mix.
    Nancy’s Alzheimer’s seems to advance in phases, as if we’re mining underground, into the unknown, toward obliteration. Currently we’ve hit the seam of lost prepositions. Morris gets exasperated with her lapses, her confusion, her failure to recognize what’s ordinary and deal with it in the old ordinary way. He has his own health problems: replacement hips that have worn out, poor circulation, numbed legs and feet. Walking is a struggle, and in the past he’s relied on his wife to be his legs. She has trouble with this role now.
    “No, no!” we hear him shouting. “The cup! The cup! In front of the book! No, not under it, in front of it! Now put the spoon in it. In it! In it! Not behind it! That’s a book! Not a book, a cup! Oh, for god’s sake, woman!” She can’t seem to distinguish between cup and book. Parietal lobe damage is responsible for this, apparently; for failing to match objects with words in that apparently simple but sneakily complex two-hander we call recognition. But telling Morris so and asking him to be less irritable makes no difference. Occasionally Nancy gets fed up with being yelled at and gets her coat and handbag. On one such day she finds me in the kitchen making soup.
    “Excuse me.” A plaintive little voice. She can’t any longer remember my name. “Excuse me, lady. I think I should tell you that I am going to have to find other accommodations.” This formal way of speaking is new. Perhaps it stems from uncertainty: her being a stranger in a strange land, needing the help of good Samaritans and needing to be polite to them. If you’re unsure who anybody is, or indeed who you are, come to that—their rank, your rank, what your relationship might be—then you’re likely to be deferential. Either that or bolshie, asserting your position. Bolshie will come later.
    When Nancy’s upset, distraction’s the only way out. Everything else, and especially reasoning , only escalates and intensifies the trouble. I take her outside, where flowers and butterflies and birds and trees do the job like