Up close and personal

 

My Notebook: Printed Pages – 9

By C.E. Pereira

A terrifying nightmare called Dementia

The wind lifted it higher. I tugged the string gently. The kite nosed dived. I let out the string. The kite rose high in the sky.

Such a bright sunny afternoon. The blue skies dotted with fluffy clouds. Like cotton candy fluff. And a dozen kites dancing among them.

This is my happy place. I go here when life throws lemons. But today, even this happy place isn’t helping. I just want to wake up from this nightmare. But it’s all real.

I feel her fear. She sees the fear. Snakes slithering on the ceiling, under her blanket, everywhere. Her reality enters the realm of Dementia.

This alternate reality she enters is a doorway to fear and darkness. Her bedroom is the dark street corner with unsavoury persons on the sidewalk. And she thinks I have abandoned her.

It changes each time. But always back to somewhere in the past. To her childhood, when her mother “threw her away”. She cries, then she pleads. She says she won’t forgive, then the next minute she ask for forgiveness.

She sees her pets either killed, dead or thrown out of the house. Each time she sees me she cries and scolds me for leaving her behind. She continuously ask me to take her home.

I’m in this emotional roller-coaster. My mind vividly see this distorted movie repeated and repeated. I get frustrated with her. I am impatient with her. And I panic that she might not come back from the past.

There is no escape. For a few minutes I can distract her and bring sanity back. But she goes back into that world doctors call Dementia. There is no sleep. Yesterday, she took a sleeping pill for the very first time. She slept for about twelve hours.

This has become my nightmare too. What ever she sees, I can visualise with such clarity. It is a reality that is terrifying. And she is living in this world every second.

She is no more the same person. The quiet, calm and gentle mother is disappearing. A frightened, screaming and confused personality is taking over.

The power of the mind can be a magical place or a hellish dungeon. Dementia is of the later. It strips a person of their dignity. It feeds them fear and confusion. I get to see it up close and personal.

What is around the corner I really don’t want to be drawn into. But I have no choice. Whatever world she finds herself inside, I will fight off the monsters she encounters. Even if she sees me as one.

🍁(18-5-2019)

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