What the body knows

He was awake when I arrived.

Classic FM was playing on his radio and his TV was on silent, but my dad was just lying in bed, looking out of the window. He seemed content.

Sometimes, when he smiles at me, he looks just like his old self.

I had brought a couple more framed photographs for his room. We’ve been trying to make it look nicer for him, but it still doesn’t quite feel as though it has enough stuff in it. It’s not our home, so there are none of the trinkets that build up over the years in a home. No bookcases lining the walls. No piles of things that have accumulated because you’ve lived somewhere for decades.

Sometimes it worries me how blank it still feels.

But it has to be functional too. It needs to be a place where he can be cared for, where staff can get him in and out of bed and into his special wheelchair, where he can sit up for a few hours a day. There isn’t much room for clutter when the room has to work so hard.

The pictures I’d brought were of him with me when I was a baby, carrying me on his back in a baby carrier, and another of him holding my daughter a day after she was born.

The second one is one of my favourite photographs of him. He looks so happy and relaxed. It was such a happy time: my first child had been born and he had become a grandfather for the first time.

I showed him the photographs and chatted to him for a while. Then I went to sit in the chair and we both just relaxed and listened to the classical music.

I thought about how we used to go to the Proms together to see concerts.

I made a plan to take my daughter along, to keep the tradition going.

Eventually, he fell asleep, his head awkwardly to one side. I didn’t want to move it and risk waking him. It reminded me of when my children were little and used to nap, sometimes in the most contorted-looking positions. I was always too scared to move them in case they woke.

Sleep is nourishing. Our bodies need it.

I’m impressed, in the midst of everything that is going on with his brain and his body, that his body still knows to rest. His nails need trimming. His beard needs cutting. He is incontinent. He is unable to walk or sit up on his own. But he can sleep. He can dream. He can get respite from the waking world.

How silly and clever the body is.

I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Dr Michael Greger’s How Not to Die, and I’m trying to nourish my own body as much as I can, following a wholefood, plant-based diet. I don’t want to risk dementia.

My whole life has changed because of it. I think differently about food. I make sure I have snacks with me if I find myself somewhere where there are no healthy vegan options. I have to warn friends that my diet has changed. I try to make sure I exercise. I try to get enough sleep.

I am constantly trying to eliminate the risk factors I can control. I hope it all works. But I feel better for it anyway.

Perhaps that is the strange thing about living with the possibility of dementia. You start learning the rules. You learn what you can do to reduce your risk. You learn what you should eat and how much you should exercise and how important sleep is.

You try to make the right choices. But sitting beside my dad, watching him sleep, I am very aware that we can never control everything.

Sometimes we need to be told things so we can avoid them. Sometimes we work them out on our own. And sometimes none of it is fair.

When I left the care home, one of the nurses stopped me to tell me that I needed to register my car registration number with the system or I could get a parking ticket. I’ve been coming there for over a year and I had no idea.

How cruel, I thought, to get a parking ticket while visiting your loved one in a care home. An extra, unseen punishment.

I suppose this is what so much of life is: learning the rules as you go along. Trying to do the right thing. Trying to protect the people you love, and yourself, from things you can see coming. And then discovering that some things cannot be avoided.

So I sat with my dad while he slept. His body, despite everything, still knew what to do.