When she was just 46, Christine Bryden – science advisor to the prime minister and single mother of three daughters – was diagnosed with younger-onset dementia. Doctors told her to get her affairs in order as she would soon be incapable of doing so. In her memoir, Christine writes about the moment she was diagnosed, and how she has rewired her brain since then.
My mother closed her eyes, held her pen aloft, and made circles in the air. Then she brought it down onto the page of her open Good Housekeeping magazine, already pockmarked all over. Her ballpoint was running low on ink. She squinted down at the mark she’d made on the page.
‘P,’ she said.
I looked at her, my own pencil poised, scrap of paper in front of me. She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece.
‘Go!’
And we were off. We were playing a game we called Town, Country, Sea, River. We had to write down as many of them that begin with the letter ‘p’ as we could, then girls’ names, boys’ names, animals and plants, in five minutes. Mum was competitive. She excelled at this game, and although I was 10 and she 38, she pushed me to beat her, and never conceded.
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As a result, I’d scour the old atlas in between games, memorising the names of obscure towns, countries and rivers. English was Mum’s second language – maybe she enjoyed the challenge of remembering the English names for things.
Memory is one of the cognitive processes I have great difficulty with now, so I treasure this snapshot of my childhood. It reminds me of a time in my life when my brain was growing, stretching, forging new pathways, as opposed to now, when it is on a gradual decline.
It reminds me of precious time with my brilliant mother, who has since died. And I treasure it simply because it is a memory, and I love and guard the memories I have left.
Many years later, in a small room in a research centre on the other side of the world, I was sitting with a neuropsychologist. I was to do a battery of tests, the scores of which, combined with an MRI scan I would be having that afternoon, would be given to a professor who would try to diagnose my type of dementia.