DEMENTIA CARE: AUTUMN LEAVES LEAVE.

November rises from the depths and brings colder weather with it. October’s gradual leaf-storm builds into a November rage. I contemplate the garden as the season changes with a clang. Flashback. I made a decision at the start of the dementia diagnosis, and that decision is with me whenever I step into the garden.

   A tree blew in from somewhere and took root. I allowed that tree to grow, as it served as a focus of memory in the garden. There’s a rose bush with a stake at its heart, as though a vampire is pinned beneath the surface.

   And to keep the tree going through its early existence, I ran lines from that stake to the sapling. The wildest winter weather huffed and it puffed, but couldn’t blow the tiny tree down.

   This tree sits exposed to the wind. In summer, I check the lines and alter them if they risk digging into the trunk. I trim the tree to within my height. It’s not allowed to grow taller than I am. The last time I let it go too long, I had to bring the stepladder into play. And that was a lesson learned last year. The flagstones are just crooked enough to make a stepladder into a shaky prospect.

   It’s enough of a fall to a hard crunchy surface to make me feel like avoiding a fall to a hard crunchy surface.

   Flailing whipping branches are no good. The larger tree enjoys this game of changing its shape to thwart my trimming as summer unspools. Now winter is at the door, and the leaves that started to yellow in October’s last days will soon flee. Then I’ll see what the tree really looks like, and I’ll take to winter maintenance – cutting back anything that needs to go.

   I speak of a larger tree as a smaller tree joined the team at the start of this year. This plant is nearer the path, but I keep the foliage at the path trimmed back from anyone using a walking frame.

   The smaller tree doesn’t need trimming at all, just yet. I’ve placed a stake in the ground, pierced another vampire’s heart, and started a run of lines from stake to sapling. String, for now. In time, I’ll change over to sturdier washing line.

   Much of the garden is paved or covered in stone chips. Foliage flourishes in bursts of colour as the seasons spin. There are still flowers smiling at the sun in October and November. With a mild winter, very few of those flowers will last into December. They have a go, and surprise me year on year.

Despite the heaviest of blusters, the larger tree is still there. Even as late as this year, with mobility reduced, the cared-for managed a go around the garden and commented on flowers and trees and the sunshine.

   I wish for more days like that. Anyway, the point is…five years on, my decision to keep the tree still paid off on that very sunny day. The garden gives me something to do when I have to take a break and step outside to calm my fucking nerves. Storms are mostly internal, lacking focus, brought on by lapses in concentration.

   When the cared-for starts an argument in an empty room, the rant becomes an argument in an empty house as I step outside and murder a few weeds. Path maintenance is about maintaining a clear path from the door to the gate and whatever vehicle is waiting there. Two ambulances came, but didn’t take anyone away. The Patient Transport van acted as an official taxi to distant appointments. I’ve started using a hired car service for visits to the back of beyond and the respite centre.

   The path has to stay clear for transport business. Two days a week, the minibus turns up for daycare visits. In off-moments, I make the time to spray weeds, hack my way through to lost cities with my machete, or battle giant Triffids for reasons of part-imagined drama. (The cutting tool is genuine. I may exaggerate its machete-ness.)

   That small tree will require more brutal trimming, as it is nearer the path and nearer the building – making it a light-blocker even at moderate size close to the window. Dementia care is about memory, and now I’m forced to scan my memory of trees in the garden.

   Photographic evidence is limited. I know there was an apple tree for a time, centrally, but that had to go…being a little shaky. There was a miniature pine tree, pretending it was Christmas all year round, but it didn’t stand up to the wind. It was never going to be allowed to grow sturdy enough, as it sat too close to path and to wall.

   There was a neighbourly tree that rose to rooftop height and spread its canopy wide enough to reach building walls, but that was a neighbour’s experiment that went too far –breaking my rule about height of tree versus height of me. A few storms hinted that it would go calamitously in the end, and for safety it went away.

   Tall trees are nuisances close to walls and windows and paths and people with Zimmer frames and no attention-span. But small and medium trees are okay in calm weather. Hard to see why an elderly person with dementia would stand next to a medium tree in a gale, but, hey, that’s why I keep the fucking door locked as much as possible.

   Reduced mobility cut the incidents of confused wandering. But you can never rule out a sudden mad turn and a walk out into the cold. Dementia Care and the Blustery Day.

   Hang spring-cleaning! Pooh’s exclamation took Christopher Robin by surprise, as he expected that sort of talk to emerge from the ranting mouth of a motorist toad. Genuine A.A. Milne stuff, there. I looked it up in the Dictionary of Misquotations. And you can misquote me on that.

   I take a very wide brush to the path on daycare mornings. Mostly, I brush tiny stones, dropped moss, and overly-heavy bones out to the road. Birds will pick up anything and drop everything their greedy birdy eyes thought they could manage. And they drop everything onto the path.

   Soft boots are easiest on the cared-for. Those are no great defence against sharp pebbles. Hence the new broom. Now, though, I am starting to sweep leaves away as well. They give off hints of yellow in September, fall gradually in October, and descend mightily in November. I am the caretaker of a memory garden that must be kept easy to navigate in all weathers. It’s my memory that makes it simpler for someone with no memory to walk through the place without tripping over Triffids.

   The last time my mother did any gardening herself, she sneaked out of the house to pull weeds with her hands. This is why I had to start locking the door. She’d drop the garden waste into the garden next door, infuriating the neighbour who felt he had to infuriate me by complaining about something that just couldn’t be helped…except by locking the door.

   Where are the dangerous places? For dementia sufferers, they are everywhere and nowhere. Kitchens are high on the list. The top of the stairs. I’m just cataloguing locations that are naturally high on the list of dangerous places whether you have dementia or not.

   So where are the dangerous places for me?

   Earlier, I was in the loft trying really hard not to drill through bits of myself. I managed this task admirably. There’ll be a chain-reaction eventually. I’m using the framework that held the water tanks as a workbench to dismantle the water tanks. Those were rendered obsolete and left in place…

   If I dismantle all the useless stuff I can gain easier access to the other half of the loft, redistribute the weight of everything stored up there, manage it all better, and put a few things down here into storage in the new old loft. That’s my chain-reaction.

   The smaller water tank is now gone. And the main water tank is in bits. A quarter of it is away already. It’s a pain in the arse to deal with, but disposal offers fresh possibilities. The lighting up there, also new, will work so much better with the tank gone.

   Soon the platform’ll be dismantled and I’ll have an extra walkway. That’ll make the loft less dangerous for me. Or possibly more dangerous for me. Both, at the same time. The loft. And the top of the stairs. The garden, whenever I use the strimmer. I think that’s the most dangerous item in the house.

   It isn’t. That’s the gas cooker. But I almost always manage to work the gas cooker responsibly. If anything, I err on cooking food to be just warm enough rather than overcooked for a fire brigade that’s axing its way through my door to save me from the smoke. The garden, with its dangers, is safer than the loft is. There are no man-eating plants in the loft…but I suspect there are far more vampires in the rafters.