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 | You and Yours - Transcript BBC Radio 4 |
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| TX: 16.11.05 -Dementia: Margaret Forster's Story PRESENTER: WINIFRED ROBINSON |
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| THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. ROBINSON Continuing our series on dementia. The condition's featured in several books over the past few years, most recently in Alan Bennett's Untold Stories, which describes his mother's long mental and physical decline. But back in 1989 when Margaret Forster wrote Have the Men Had Enough dementia was only just beginning to register as a subject for public debate. Her vivid account of the once tough and self-relying grandma gradually falling apart as dementia takes hold was instantly recognised as so true to life that it was quickly being used as a teaching tool in universities and at nursing colleges. It's closely based on the experience of Margaret Forster's own family. It was Marion Davies, the mother of Margaret Forster's husband, Hunter Davies who had dementia. Margaret Forster began the novel three weeks after her mother-in-law died. It begins with the family gathered for Sunday lunch. EXTRACT FROM HAVE THE MEN HAD ENOUGH "Have the men had enough?" "Never mind the men." "Which men?" "Hurry up, the potatoes will be cold." "I'd love a potato." "Then take one grandma." "Have the men had enough?" Always the same, every week, every Sunday, all of us crowded round the table, grandma wedged in between Bridget and Paula. Bridget of course laughing at everything grandma says and Paula not even smiling and moving away ever so slightly when grandma plonks her hand flat in the gravy as she searches for her fork. "Have the men had enough?" "Yes thank you mother." "Who's mother?" "You are. Go on mother help yourself." "Hold the plate steady. Steady the bus." "Go on grandma." "Have the men had enough?" ROBINSON What did she mean - have the men had enough? Why did she keep asking that? FORSTER Because her whole life and the life of a whole generation of working class Scottish north country women was ruled by the men. The men had the first of everything. So if the men hadn't had enough the woman couldn't eat. And of course in the novel and in the real life of mother-in-law that went deeper still in these kind of family situations, however caring many a son and brother is you nearly always find that the weight of the looking after of the Alzheimer's victim falls on the women because the men have had enough very quickly. So it has a kind of double edged thing. ROBINSON One of the devices that you use in the book is to write out these strange fragmented monologues of grandma, were they taken from life? FORSTER Most of them are absolutely. I mean there are some I'm very fond of, like the one where the son in the book is going to Australia and she says: "I've been to Australia." And everyone knows she hasn't been to Australia, but she says she had. "How did you get there?" "I went by bus from Canada." And everyone guffaws, but that sort of thing is true, she did become convinced about things like that. And of course one of the features of Alzheimer's - the repetitive nature of things they say and that's what drives people absolutely mad. ROBINSON Tell us a bit more about your mother-in-law, here in your house there are framed photographs of her. FORSTER Well my mother-in-law was enormously a family person, that's what she lived for. And she had really all her life expected that she would always be surrounded by her family, I mean that was what a family was. But in these new times, as we know, people grow up, they go to college, they get jobs, they move away from local places like Carlisle, which is where after she left Scotland she spent most of her life. And she suddenly found herself at the age of sort of mid-50s living on her own in a bungalow, which to her was a kind of horror. And I, as the daughter-in-law, always felt tremendously guilty because I felt that we were the ones who had the fairly large house in London and the three children and we had enough money to be able to look after her, we were the ones who should have said well come and live with us. But I couldn't have done that because although I admired her terrifically, I mean no one couldn't have admired her, she was a wonderful woman, who'd had a very, very hard life and she was kind and she was cheerful and she was good humoured - she had all the virtues but she drove me mad you know, we were chalk and cheese. I mean I was efficient and capable and quick and organised and she was the exact opposite of those things, she was very sociable and I'm not, I was always conspiring to be on my own and she was always conspiring to fill in the house and, as she put it, have a wee dance. So it would have been completely fatal really, but she was a lovely woman. And this picture I'm looking at here shows us in our garden and my mother-in-law who by that time was well into Alzheimer's, I mean she only actually had about four more years to live, if that, and she looks absolutely lovely with this gorgeous white hair, this strong beaming face, she was a big woman. And beside her are her twin daughters, bursting with pride, I'm at the end looking not quite so confident and there's two of her grandchildren are sitting at her feet. Now that's my mother-in-law, that composition is exactly what she wanted in life - herself at the centre of a family. ROBINSON What struck me about the book was really how much everybody loves grandma and how decent everybody in the book is, was it like that in life? FORSTER Yes it was, oh yes, all her family were very decent, except of course she did in the end die in Frien Barnet, which was the old mental hospital in North London, so we weren't so decent that we managed through thick and thin to keep her at home. ROBINSON Will you just read for us, if you would, one of the accounts of the homes, which are pretty uniformly awful? EXTRACT FROM HAVE THE MEN HAD ENOUGH She was there. She was sitting on her own at a table for four. The room was empty, all the dozen or so tables cleaned and relaid for the next meal. It was a dull afternoon and the room, although it had a large window, was quite dark. Grandma was motionless, starring straight ahead, slumped in an attitude of total dejection. I rushed up to her saying her name but there wasn't a flicker of response. I came right up to her and said - hey, it's me. And she looked straight at me with entirely blank eyes. It seemed to me that there was a faintly sickly odour about her and tiny flecks of what looked like foam in the corner of her mouth but it was meringue clinging to her incipient moustache. I wiped it away far too energetically, still talking to her. It took a long time for any recognition to dawn and even then she didn't know my name. I wanted to cry. I longed to go and shout at someone and blame them but there was still no one about. FORSTER That's absolutely true to life. ROBINSON When the staff at the home say to the daughter-in-law, who is you I guess, you have spoiled her with one-to-one care, did that really happen too? FORSTER Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, she has to get used now to not having that, it's a mistake to indulge them too much, they're like children you know they'll run all over you - all these kind of expressions. That was in Frien Barnet, which doesn't exist anymore. ROBINSON That is the place where ... FORSTER Where she died. ROBINSON ... she died. What do you think people with dementia need, what do you think the state should do? FORSTER Well I think it's an almost insuperable problem for the state to apply themselves to keeping them in a home environment and being able to look after them there is a much better option. But for that, as they get near the end, you would need to have someone living there 24 hours a day. It's something that we did consider and we got masses of replies from our adverts in the Cumberland News, she was still in Carlisle at the time. But interviewing the people, it was - you couldn't trust them at all, the sort of people who were replying to those adverts. And it was always going to break down continually, you would only get somebody and you could see what would happen, in no time at all they would get a more interesting job and they would go. But I think that is a better way to go, to put the resources the state's got into funding care in their own homes. ROBINSON One of the things the book realises really fantastically well is the fear of Alzheimer's and dementia that is in us all, that there are so few services, even homes that exists for people with dementia won't take people in the final stages because it upsets the other residents, even when she goes into temporary respite care the other people in the social services home don't want anybody - anything to do with anyone who doesn't have their marbles. Why are we so frightened do you think? FORSTER Well I mean it is frightening surely, I mean you only have to think yourself of perhaps just forgetting something momentarily and the enormous effort you make to try and remember it, that's what we are - we are our past, we are our memory and if that's wiped out we're nothing. ROBINSON We're afraid for ourselves do you think? FORSTER Yes rightly. I mean I think it is absolutely terrifying. I mean it's like being mentally dizzy and never coming out of the flat spin that you can be in or not being able to keep your balance - that is frightening, it's terribly frightening. ROBINSON The death of grandma in the book is profoundly moving and sad, I suppose because of everything that goes before, the suffering, and because somehow she remains herself throughout it all, would you read from that? EXTRACT FROM HAVE THE MEN HAD ENOUGH Today when I went to see grandma she was not in her chair, nor was Sister Grice in her office. Another sister was there. She said grandma was in bed, that the doctor had been round and thought it advisable because the breathing was worse, there was some sign of infection. We went together to see grandma, who was in the small side ward where she'd started off. She was propped up on huge pillows and turned onto her left side. The new sister left. I sat beside grandma's bed. It was quiet, peaceful. Grandma slept and wheezed. Her colour was dreadful - a dirty grey lying under her usual yellow pallor. Then to my surprise she opened her eyes and starred at me. I bent forward and said loudly who I was. A faint flicker of a smile came and went and an attempt at speech. I took her hand, again the strong grip fiercely strong and another mumble. My ear almost against her lips I distinctly heard "Thank you." Thank you for what - for putting her in here, for discouraging Bridget from taking her out, for putting myself first? I wanted anything but thanks from her, thanks were unbearable. FORSTER Yeah that's true. But also there's a bit in that chapter which is also true which is the day she was dying and she was lying on her back this time and her mouth was open and she was just - her face was like a skeleton's face and she was struggling to breathe and there's this huge intake of breath and then silence and you think thank god it's over and then it starts again - the wheeze. And I did actually try to close her mouth and put my hand over her face - I mean I didn't put a pillow over her face but I put my hand, closed her mouth, put my hand over the mouth and the nose because I just wanted it over. And what was extraordinary was the incredible strength with which she opened her mouth and of course I immediately took my hand away. But she was struggling but she wanted to go on struggling, there was no attempt to give up at all, she fought every inch of the way. And of course with my mother-in-law, when she was in her right mind and the Alzheimer's hadn't really become galloping, if you'd said to her look this is happening, would you like to be put to sleep - not that anyone will ever say that - she would have been appalled and said no, she wanted life at any cost she wanted to go on. Now my father, who did not have Alzheimer's, who lived till he was 96, in his last weeks, last months, if you'd said to him look dad you know, we know, that you are dying and it's going to be a long slow - would you like ..., he would have leapt at it. The life force in my mother-in-law was really strong, even through Alzheimer's and until the very, very end she still could get pleasure out of the day, even if it was just sucking a mint or having the cups of tea - even if she was pouring the tea down her ear practically she still had this capacity for pleasure, for enjoyment. ROBINSON You raise lots of questions in the book about life, about quality of life, about love, about euthanasia, questions that are not answered. But in your own mind you must have answered some of those questions - what did you take from that experience? FORSTER Well I mean it's very smart of me isn't it to ask all the right questions and have none of the answers - I'm well aware of that. But I am in favour of euthanasia, I mean at a certain sort of stage. The last six weeks of my mother-in-law's life, the quality of it was appalling. The pleasure I've just talked about had completely gone, she was suffering, she was totally deranged in the real meaning of that word, she didn't know any longer how to eat or anything. What is the point? I don't see any sanctity of human life. I mean I'm not saying that anybody with incipient Alzheimer's ought immediately to be killed, of course not, but I do think these last stretches of people's lives, making them go through this with no hope at all of any kind of recovery is stupid, from every point of view. ROBINSON You didn't find anything enriching? FORSTER Definitely not, quite the opposite - it's degrading, it's degrading for the person dying and it's degrading for the people watching the dying. There is no - you just feel disgusted and helpless and you feel such pity, they're just lumps, just things. And however much you love them you want to put them out of this misery, not just your own misery, but their misery I think. ROBINSON As you look around the house today are there memories of your mother-in-law in this house? FORSTER Oh of course the memories of her, I mean we never have a Sunday lunch without reminiscing, there are all kinds of - I mean lots of phrases she had, like if one of the grandchildren is looking - is in some sort of sulk and she would say: "Who stole your scone?" Or if someone was very cross with somebody she would say: "Anything else while your mouth's warm?" So all these catch phrases - we all absolutely laugh, you know, they go on and on and on. ROBINSON Margaret Forster. And if you want to discuss anything that she said or share with us your experiences then our help line is open, as ever 0800 044 044. Back to the You and Yours homepage The BBC is not responsible for external websites |
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