The brain that destroys itself

There’s a lot in the news these days about how the brain can cope with injury, rewiring and recovering using neuroplasticity – the ability of the brain to remodel itself.

If our brains are neuroplastic, then it seems to me that dementia is the opposite. It’s some kind of corrosive substance that eats away patches of the brain with random, impersonal cruelty. Faster then neuroplasticity can possibly manage.

How else can I explain that my mum tells me the same story, every time I see her, about her Dad sitting on a seat that didn’t even exist 30 years ago when he died?

That it is fixed in her head that there is a swimming pool in a nearby property because it had a “Danger, Swimming pool under construction” sign on it for a few months several years ago, when they were digging out the underground garage. The house has been finished for a long time, but the fictitious swimming pool remains front and centre in what’s left of her brain.

Me, though… I am gone. Well mostly gone. She knows she knows me – today, wonder of wonders, she even knew my name, which is rare – but she asked me if I knew her children: Sally, Jane, and Kerrie.

When I arrived at her place she told me she wouldn’t be living there much longer. I asked her where she would go, and she said she had parents nearby.

A bit later she told me her parents had died and that’s why she was living alone. I don’t know if she remembers my Dad at all. I didn’t have the heart to ask. Anyway, it changes from moment to moment.

Why does the swimming pool stick in her head, when I am gone? It’s not long term and short term, or early memories vs late. It’s far more random than that.

We went to Red Brick, as usual, and Chris and Bruce were lovely. I don’t know how I would survive these visits if it weren’t for them. Within the space of a few minutes she said she hadn’t been there for years, and that she goes there often.

As the visit went on and she bounced back and forth through time like a confused pinball, I think Chris could see I was struggling. When he brought me my coffee he gave me a pat on the back that nearly broke me. Sometimes when you’re only barely keeping it together, someone being nice to you can tip you over the edge, have you noticed that?

She is deaf as a post and doesn’t hear one word in five, but it doesn’t matter because the words she does hear mostly don’t make sense to her. She has got to the point where she tends to fill in the conversation in her own head a lot of the time, which is almost restful. I try to let it all wash over me but it breaks my heart and pulverises my brain. Being with her is devastating and exhausting, and I feel as though I am losing myself in her frantic confusion.

Mum doesn’t see me anymore, whether I am there or not. And maybe it shouldn’t matter. Even before dementia took her away, she never saw me clearly. I was never who she wanted me to be. Maybe now I am easier for her to accept. As for me, I struggle to wrap my head around this new reality. My mum is dead, and I don’t know what to make of the stranger who inhabits her skin. She is dead, yet she dies a little more every day. How do you process that?

Sometimes Mum peers through the fragments of her personality and I can tell she is terrified by what’s happening to her. When I leave, she says fearfully “I didn’t do anything wrong, did I?”

I reassure her as best I can, and I cry all the way home.

Close to home

Let’s be clear: The current hot air around marriage equality in Australia is not a debate. The term “debate” implies rational discussion on both sides. There is no debate here. Just as the video going around about the Safe Schools anti-bullying programme peddles outright lies about the content of the programme, the “debate” around marriage equality consists of conservatives screaming “but think of the children” and other unrelated, emotive cries, and progressives saying “it’s a human rights issue”.

There is no place for debate here. There is nothing to debate. It’s like saying racial segregation needs to be debated. Nope. It really doesn’t. According people basic human rights should never be up for debate. You don’t get to declare me more, or less, worthy of human rights than you are. And I don’t get to do that to you. Because we are, or are trying to be, a civilized society that believes in justice.

There is no way to “debate” this, without saying that gay people aren’t full members of society.

The chances are that this ludicrous postal vote will come down to marketing. Who has the best campaign? Who mobilises more people to vote?  It will come down to who has the most persuasive arguments.

But there’s one argument used on the left that makes me a little sad. It’s probably effective, but that makes me even sadder. It’s this line: “I have a loved one who is gay, that’s why marriage equality is important to me.”

It makes sense that we care about things that hit close to home. But this is why the Australian government is still getting away with torturing refugees, and why marriage equality is not a done deal. Because human rights are only important to us when they are being denied to someone we care about.

As it happens, I do have loved ones who are gay. Given the numbers, we almost certainly all do, whether we know it or not. But that’s not why marriage equality matters.

Marriage equality matters because without it we are telling gay kids that they are less than straight ones.

Marriage equality matters because without it we are telling gay couples that their love is less than straight couples’.

Let’s turn that around: Marriage equality matters because gay people are people just like straight ones. Marriage equality matters because a gay relationship is just as committed, just as valuable, and sometimes just as broken, as any straight relationship. Marriage equality matters because we need to prove to gay kids that they are fully paid up members of this club we call “civilized society”. Marriage equality matters because gay kids, gay adults, and gay relationships matter, just the same as straight ones.

Not because it’s close to me, or close to you. Because love should be celebrated, and people should be valued. Your sexuality is not relevant to anyone you’re not trying to go to bed with. It should not be the deciding factor in any other decision anyone else makes.

Marriage equality matters because people are people, and love is love.