TheBanyanTree: Dementia and Horror

[Monique Colve]

Recently we watched The Haunting of Bly Manor, this year’s follow up to the Haunting of Hill House. I loved it, and then cried, but just for a few minutes, then I moved on with my life. 

The dementia is not here, but I feel it creeping up on me, like an itch in your throat that presages a really bad cold, or Covid, but you don’t know which, and you’re not even sure if it’s just paranoia. Memories are fleeting, but mostly the short term ones, because that’s how it works. Some times, often, I’m sure I’m missing something but I can’t figure out if I am or not, much less what it is.

In Bly Manor, loss and memory are tied together with death, and in death memories slip away along with the self, and the face disappears until it’s nothing more than a blank slate. Sometimes people don’t know they’re dead. I don’t expect to have memories when I’m dead, but it’s the dementia that concerns me.

I don’t need to be reassured, nor reminded that “everyone forgets things, I’m just normal,” nor that I’ll be entertaining for the rest of society. Hangings used to be entertainment too. I am very content and happy these days for the most part, with the occasional down moment, but in general I’m glad to be me here now. Considering Parkinson’s presents with depression and anxiety, this is pretty damn good.

I am fascinated with how brains work, or don’t. I’d love to talk about it, but there’s no one to talk to. Andrew deals with enough, and he listens, but I don’t want to drown him in existential thoughts. So this medium will have to do. No one wakes up one day to find dementia has moved all the way in, taking up all the space. It comes slowly, a slip of the mind here or there, enough so you can tell yourself is normal, we all forget where we put our keys last, right? 

But it keeps coming until entire days can disappear, slipping away slowly like the tide going out, but the tide stops coming back until there’s no movement, just calm water. Every so often the tree will be a blip on the surface, and the scene becomes clear, then it’s gone again.

Or so I imagine. How would I know? 

When I use THC/CBD for my anxiety (it can calm me for a week) I can feel the dementia right below the surface, and though I can’t remember things from one minute to the next, I find it both amusing and fascinating. Are the synapses exploding like fireworks, gone forever? Feels like it. 

Bly Manor reminded me I just may slip away and not notice the point where I go from here to there, everything that makes me me turned into a blank facade. Or I may not. Losing the self is the terrifying part, because I intend to see this Parkinson’s thing through to the end, but the dementia may get me first.

Or not. I don’t know. I’ll just keep track as I go, and see what happens.

I’m up for an adventure.


Monique
Sent from my iPad