Everything happens for a reason

Recently, I found myself walking within a continuous loop of serendipity.

It all started with an innocuous email I sent to someone recommending they read Paul Lynch’s Booker winning ‘Prophet Song’. This someone, we’ll call him Gaustine, is a person I have never met.

In fact, I’ve never even seen him. I have just heard and listened to his growling baritone voice as we discussed endless rounds of technical scenarios followed by brief exchanges on Shakespeare. Not natural bedfellows but life often throws up unexpected surprises, random curveballs we don’t see coming but which nonetheless put a smile on our lips.

“Strongly recommend you read this. It’s not Shakespeare, but it’s incredibly well written,” said I. 

Gaustine’s response set in train a series of events that have enveloped me over the last few days.

Having thanked me for recommending the Lynch book he instructed me to “go to the International section of the 2023 Booker prize, you will see Georgi Gospodinov, the author of ‘Time Shelter’, a book I could not possibly like.”

I went, as directed, to that particular section of the Booker site and could find nothing to indicate why this culture-loving acquaintance could not possibly like this book. What I did discover however, was that Time Shelter is a book written about memory loss. 

Those who know anything about me will immediately understanding my compulsion to read it.

I sent a note to this unwitting motivator, he who inadvertently prompted me to explore this beautifully crafted homage to landscapes locked within: “Everything happens for a reason Gaustine,” I told him, “it was as if I was meant to read it.”

Serendipity knocked and I answered. And while it would appear that Gaustine had no truck with either author or book, he had involuntarily played the role of catalyst in what became a short series of serendipitous events.

I read Time Shelter, and to say that it touched nerves which are still very raw would be an understatement. A book which mines the shafts of lives lived, it brings to life the vivid memories of those who have long since forgotten the present in which they exist, their moth-eaten minds instead choosing to position them in those situations and scenes from their past with which they felt most affinity.

“(Mr. N) has lost his memory and must gather up the pieces of himself before he passes away … Some of the stories mean nothing (to him), as if they are not about him at all. Others open long-forgotten doors in his memory”. The story of Mr. N, so carefully recounted finds him standing amidst a jumble of jigsaw pieces, some of which are missing, which he relies on a former adversary to help put together to form a coherent picture of his past. Only then can he stream the footage of this splintered sequence of events floating across the landscape of his memory. 

Time Shelter leads us slowly, step by step, into the confused and confusing other world of dementia. It is a grey, faded world which so many of us know only from the outside, but which Gospodinov turns inside out to help us visualise the increasingly paralysed views of those trapped by the incoming tide of memory loss.

It plunges the depths of memory loss, shattering niceties along the way and delivering the harsh realities of living with dementia with innovatively delivered candour.

On Saturday night, as the light of my own very real world slipped into dark, I turned on the TV, landing on C4 and the opening credits of a film entitled ‘The Father’. To be honest, the only reason I put down the remote was the cast – Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman.

I looked it up. “The Father presents a devastatingly empathetic portrayal of dementia.”

Serendipity, #2.

I watched in silent if uncomfortable admiration as both lead actors slowly and with pin-point accuracy danced a well choreographed duet as the walls of their lives as they had known them came tumbling down around them. The Father is a filmic walk through the chaos and despair of the demented mind. It makes for uncomfortable and discombobulating viewing. Three scenes in my mind was reeling, I had to press re-wind I don’t know how many times to fact check. Had I missed something? Did I get that wrong? Who’s he?

In an interview after the film was released, Hopkins told the interviewer “I feel that melancholy. I can understand it.” He conveyed the deep melancholia of that lost soul spiralling into the fog-filled vortex that is ‘confusia dementia’ with such understanding and tenderness, it made for deeply disturbing viewing. 

But that is the reality of dementia. Deeply uncomfortable viewing.

“What about me. Who, exactly am I?

Do you know my mother? She has such big eyes. I can see her face now. She was, I hope she will come and see me soon sometime. Do you think, Mummy? My Mummy. I want my mummy, I want my mummy, I want to get out of here. Have someone come and fetch me … I want to go home.

I feel as if I’m losing all my leaves. The branches, the wind and the rain. I don’t know what’s happening anymore.” – Anthony, The Father.

In the last few months of her time at home (before she was hospitalised and subsequently died) I experienced similar situations with my mother. “My father was standing at the end of the bed earlier,” she’d say with total conviction, “he was standing there with his shirt sleeves rolled up the way he always did.” 

“Did he say anything?,” I’d ask. “No, he just stood there smiling at me.”

I’d want to cry but I couldn’t. In those moments she was truly happy. Her father had come to visit her. He hadn’t forgotten her. There was nothing to be afraid of. There was only love.

Then came Serendipity, #3.

On Sunday morning an article appeared online; “My mum passed away this year and I can’t get past the grief.” All I wanted to do was take this person’s hand and reassure them that it was ok to feel like this. Baubles and tinsel aside, Christmas can a tough time of the year for many for different reasons. You can’t just park grief because it’s merry ho, ho. But you can learn to adjust. 

Grief is a journey without destination. 

For some, that journey is a long, arduous and seemingly never-ending one.

For others, it is a series of stop-starts before arriving at journey’s end. The final station at which they disembark and move on with their life, not in the own old way, but in a new way. A way learned along a journey only they can take. 

An emotional road to nowhere that does ultimately get us to where we need to be to lift anchor and face forward.

In the world of the truly inspirational late Dr. Clare Marx, “we only look back to learn, we look forward to live”. 

It has been an interesting if often disconcerting week. One that came full circle with the Claire Byrne segment on grief at Christmas on RTE 1 radio. During this piece, two experts discussed how in some instances, family relatives encourage the bereaved to clear out the wardrobe, bedroom, house; the “you’ll feel better” “he/she wouldn’t want you moping around” brigade.

My response to that? Each to their own. Do what you feel is right for you, when you feel the time is right for you. And no-one else. Your grief is your own. Only you know how to deal with it.

And as for Time Shelter? I posted it to Gaustine. With a letter, explaining why I think he should give it a try.

I have no idea whether he will read it. I hope he does. 

Everyone should read it, as everyone should watch The Father. The more we come to understand the effects of dementia the better we will be able to live with and care for those we love who have succumbed to this most callous of diseases.

“What thievery life (and time) is, eh? What a bandit … Worse than the worst of highwaymen who ambush a peaceful caravan. Those bandits are interested only in your purse and in hidden gold. If you are docile and hand these over without a struggle, they leave you the other stuff – your life, your memory, your heart, your pecker. But this robber, life or time, comes and takes everything – your memory, your heart, your hearing, your pecker. It doesn’t even choose, just grabs whatever it can.” – Time Shelter, Georgi Gospodinov