Featured photo – Melbourne author and television producer Michelle Wyatt.
There’s no denying that Alzheimer’s is joked about. Even those most prone to this devastating disease, the elderly, self deprecatingly refer to to it as Oldtimer’s. It may be a way of denial that this insidious syndrome is much more formidable than mere forgetfulness.
In her forthright memoir of dealing with her mother’s descent into Alzheimer’s, NOT RIGHT IN THE HEAD, Michelle Wyatt admits that it’s a tough topic to write about with any kind of lightheartedness, yet she succeeds wonderfully in getting the balance right.
That balance comes from a sharing of a family headed up by the seemingly indefatigable Dad, Frank, to whom the book is dedicated. As much as Michelle and her siblings rallied to deal with their mother’s dementia, it was Dad who led the charge, a living manifestation of the marriage vow “in sickness and in health.”
Michelle’s mum, Bev, suffered from the disease and its insidious co-partnered condition, dementia, for thirteen years, the final six in a nursing home. Frank attended her every day and became a fixture of the facility. It was his observation, “I’m telling you love, some of the other patients are not right in the bloody head” that gave Michelle the title of her memoir.
“There it is in a nutshell. Each and every patient in the dementia ward wasnt ‘right in the head’ and none of them were able to function in a ‘normal’ environment- including Mum, which Dad didn’t want to acknowledge. But sad as it all was, I had to admit that some of his stories were highly entertaining. I just needed to sit back and allow myself a moment to smile.”
Michelle became pregnant after her Mum disappeared into the dark of dementia and it is one of the profoundest regrets that Bev never knew her grandson, Sam. Some consolation, though, is that Sam knew his Grandmother, albeit sick, and there is an “out of the mouths of babes” poignancy pertaining to his perception of her as a person.
Man, woman, birth, death, infinity, like the opening credits of the vintage TV show, Ben Casey, NOT RIGHT IN THE HEAD contemplates life’s major issues.
“As soon as you consider starting a family you think about what maternity hospital you want to be in, and once you’ve had the baby, then begins the process of putting their name down for day care, primary school, secondary school, and so on – until one day you are applying for a spot in a retirement village, then a nursing home, then a burial plot. You start out trying to secure your future, and end up looking for somewhere to end it.”
Between the beginning and the end, through difficulty and despair, the weird and the wonderful witnessed by Michelle Wyatt and her family illustrates there is so much room for joy and laughter.
NOT RIGHT IN THE HEAD by Michelle Wyatt is published by Allen & Unwin
https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/general-books/biography-autobiography/Not-Right-In-The-Head-Michelle-Wyatt-9781760290566