Mummascribbles – The effect a book can have on you – Mummascribbles

I have recently finished reading a book. A book that has given me the need to hold back many a tear on the commute into work. My eyes have literally been brimming with them. The book is called Still Alice and is the story of a lady with early on-set Alzheimer’s.  You may have read the book, you may have seen the film. If you haven’t read the book then you really, really should. I always try to read before watching!

I am not going to write a book review because despite my love of writing (and not being too bad at it), I am absolutely rubbish at book reviews. What I will say is that this book is both heart-warming and heart wrenching. I have fallen so in love with the main character from the very beginning as a successful Harvard Professor and feel like I’ve lived with her through the initial forgetfulness, her diagnosis and the fast deterioration of her incredible mind to the point where she no longer recognises her husband and children. It has been utterly heartbreaking. It has been like watching a loved one deteriorate in front of my eyes and even though I know that there is no cure, I’ve been so desperate for her to get better, to find a drug that works and to not have this horrible disease. I can honestly say that a book has never quite had this impact on me where I’ve been thinking about it after I’ve put it down.

I have no doubt that the book would have affected me anyway but throughout it, it got me thinking about dad, who didn’t have Alzheimer’s but did have a brain tumour that very quickly worked its way to destroying parts of his brain in the way that Alzheimer’s does. Like Alice, he was fine. Then suddenly it was his body that started giving away his illness before his mind did. It started out slow, he couldn’t move his leg properly and then his arm up until the point where he needed help to move from a chair to wherever he needed to be (mainly the commode). Then it was his mind. He started forgetting things, not making sense of things and having a slightly slurred speech. Until one day he woke up and he was no longer him. I don’t think it ever got to the point where he didn’t know who we were. Even when he was in the hospice and mostly asleep, when he did open his eyes he seemed to always recognise us, even amongst the confusion of where he was and what was going on. Watching someone you love slowly fade away is just horrendous and having those memories definitely impacted the journey I took with the main protagonist in this book.

In a way, I am glad that it got me thinking about dad. Don’t get me wrong, I think about him every day but not in the way that this book made me think. I often think of him not being here, about what he is missing, what he has missed. It’s been nearly three and a half years since we lost him. This will be our fourth Christmas without him and it still doesn’t feel right with him not being there. And yet sometimes it doesn’t even feel real that he’s not here. When I think back to that time when he was so ill, it can almost feel like it was a dream. It was all such a whirlwind between his diagnosis and us losing him that I don’t think I ever had time to really think about the realities of it. And then with a child, time sweeps you by and you don’t have time to think of those really bad times, rather remembering how he was before we lost him.

Zach refers to dad as grandad in the woods because of where his ashes are buried. He will often ask to go and visit him. He will point at the photo of him and state who he is even though he never met him. He will take on board the fact that he technically has two grandads even though he only sees one. He doesn’t understand. He can’t understand, because he is only three,, and so he simply goes along with it. Death has been mentioned to him. It happens all the time in life, flowers dying, our cat dying, spiders dying; but he has never asked why grandad isn’t here. I haven’t as yet had to explain anything about it to him. But I do know the time will come and I’ve looked online and there is a real lack of information to help explain to young children about the people that we lost before they popped into the world, who were really important to us, and would have been to them. So, I thought that while I’m writing this post, I could come to you lovely people for any advice or any books that might help when the time does come of him asking questions. I’d rather be prepared for it to happen than not be prepared.

At this special time of year, I hope those of you who have lost loved ones are ok and remembering them in their happy times. I often try to think of dad before he got ill because it is far better to remember that than those few months when he was so poorly. The latter makes me sad whereas thinking of him as he was makes me smile – even if it was one of our many arguments!