How Come You Always Think You’re Right?

Is the truth just your point of view?

Of all the people in our little group of dementia patients and their caregivers, he was the hardest to reach. Spoke only when he was spoken to. Just a few words. Hanging on the edge of our conversations, straight-faced, eyes with just a flicker of interest.

But one day I’d helped him find the way down to the gents. And coming back, just him and me, he’d opened up.

– I used to love running. Ran for the Sale Harriers, I did. For years.

There was a little self-conscious smile at the memory he’d managed.

And now, today, I tried to get him talking again. Maybe because he was such a challenge. I wanted to get him involved with the group.

– Remember you told me how you liked running? Well, I’ve just started again, the first time in years. I’m planning to do the Manchester 10K. Did you race with your club?

– They threw me out.

His wife jumped in.

– No they didn’t. It was the choir who threw you out, not the running club. How could you forget that?

He turned back to me, shrugged shoulders and eyebrows, and I got half a smile again. A sheepish one.

The rest of the afternoon he was silent.

Why are we all so keen to correct? ‘You’re wrong, I’m right. My truth is better than yours.’

As facts merge with fiction for my own Alzheimers partner, I’m slowly learning to bite my tongue. She tells me that her mother’s waiting for us at home. If that’s her story, then so be it — at least she has a story. Mine’s different: we visited her mother’s grave in Stockholm a couple of months back.

Once I’d have insisted on my version of truth. Not any more. I’ve learnt here’s no logic that will shake either of us out of our beliefs.

It’s a good lesson. If we could just all quietly accept that others are entitled to different truths, alternative realities, then the world would be a kinder place.

Quieter too. Would we give Twitter back to the birds, I wonder?

Originally written in 2015 and published on my website, The Care Combine.

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