When the future is buried under the past, something goes wrong. If the past is annihilated, the individual loses what makes him unique. Vassili Grossman claimed that when someone dies, the unique and unrepeatable world he built collapses with him: a universe with its own oceans, mountains and sky. Some diseases, by devouring memories and words, cause a devastating effect similar to what the Ukrainian writer describes.
F. comes to pick me up in a small town in La Segarra to take me to the airport. As he lowers the window, he reflects: “Memory is like water in the field. Too much rain damages the roots; without it, nothing grows”. I ask him for news about his mother. Two years ago, when she was diagnosed with aphasia and, shortly after, Alzheimer’s, F. moved in with her. Fortunately, he can work from home, but he juggles like the ultimate balancer to juggle it all. In a sense, he lives disconnected from the world and accompanying me to the airport today is a luxury he relishes. With greed in his eyes, I see him devouring the landscape as he drives, enjoying these few hours of freedom.
“It’s funny – he tells me – I spend my day working with words: I read, write, translate… Meanwhile, my mother slips into absolute silence, beyond language, and that terrifies me”. To visualize this, he resorts to metaphors such as drought, with dry rivers, and the earth cracked by thirst, which evokes the parched areas of the brain.
When passing through Montserrat, he confesses: “This is the most difficult translation I have done: its silences. I complete her ellipsis, trying not to make her feel bad. Now I am his dictionary and his map, his agenda and his guide. I am the pointer who tells him the script so that the function does not stop and the silence is not uncomfortable”. He recommends that I read Juan Mayorga’s speech on silence at the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and quotes a passage from one of his works: “The language is in pieces and it is only love that speaks”.
A few days ago F. sent me the La Contra interview with Carme ElÃas, and added the link: “My mother has a Bruce Willis, frontotemporal and aphasia”. He does not understand why it is necessary to resort to actors known as hook to remind society of a disabling disease, the most common form of dementia, which affects more than 800,000 people in Spain alone. This figure corresponds to diagnosed cases, which are usually detected in medium or advanced states. Sometimes the disease lurks, silently, for a decade before showing its claws.
When he joined C-31, he asked me if I knew the term anosognosia, which he found in a neurologist’s book. Since I don’t say anything, he explains to me that it comes from the Greek words nosos, “disease”, and gnosis, “knowledge”, added to the prefix -a (deprivation), and refers to the inability to recognize illness in oneself . “It’s a defense mechanism, I imagine, also experienced by amputees or those who suffer from paralysis after a stroke. A way to avoid panic: the tranquility of ignorance”.
F. talks about degenerative dementias, but I draw a parallel with the public debate, to which the term does not fit well. Every two or three days “a debate opens” – today surrogacy, yesterday the renewal of the judiciary, tomorrow access to housing – but it seems that no conclusions are reached, like the slipping finger in infinite scroll across the screen. For example, the anosognosia of the desertification of the Peninsula: is it preferable to deny the obvious instead of looking for long-term solutions? In today’s politics, just like for the Alzheimer’s patient, the past fades away and the future does not exist, only a perpetual present remains.
F. comments that in consultations and centers they repeat the same thing: “We are few, the righteous ones not to close this”. It is confirmed by the psychiatrist at the public hospital, the therapists at the day care centre, the geriatrician. With her, her mother makes an annual visit, like the MOT of an old car. F. describes the perfect storm: “By 2030, the number of people affected is expected to double, there will be a shortage of specialists, an overload in primary care and a titanic struggle between families and patients”.
When you arrive at the departures area, park and take out your luggage. “I’m sure you left something behind,” he jokes, even though I know I look like a disaster at packing. I hug him and tell him I’m proud of what he does. “When you come back from Uzbekistan – he smiles – I will be here. No, I won’t forget it.”