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                              “ Scourged ” by Michelle Dooley Mahon                             A  Book Review by Richard Connolly   There are several worthy memoirs written by authors who have watched their loved ones suffer from Alzheimer’s, most notably: “ Elegy for Iris” by John Bailey and “ My Journey into Alzheimer’s Disease ” by Robert Davis. “ Scourged” by Michelle Dooley Mahon is another remarkable piece of work and documents her late mother Siobháns descent into Alzheimer’s. The book’s title cleverly plays on two meanings.  The “ Scourge ” is Alzheimer’s, but also it is an affectionate term that Siobhan uses when referring to her daughter throughout her life. An important aspect of Michelle’s writing, which separates it from other Alzheimer memoirs, is the unique ...

Something about a suitcase I think ........... Having torn a page out of my passport in my cups to give a stranger my phone number, and thus rendering it null and void, and a moot point simultaneously, it came as a complete surprise that I could not actually use it when needed. The Skin & Blister had booked herself, the Quiet Leitrim Man and the child into a villa in Southern Spain and I was all over it like shite on a blanket. I let them get a good run at it by allowing them 3 days grace before I rocked up figuring they would have sussed out what the Jackanory was by then and allow me to get in like Flynn as soon as I stepped off the plane into a hot smell of Marlboro.   - “ What do you mean you have no passport??” the Skin & Blister asks with one eyebrow up in her hair. I drew a veil over the more outrageous truth and she informs that I may take myself to the city and join a throng of desperate hopeless people in a crush with their faces pressed up ...

3 days before I launch my book I am sitting in the Doctors surgery. Again. "I'm exhausted and wore out" I tell her as I slump across the desk. "I've the flu and the galloping consumption, I've the black lung, I've the cold sweats and I haven't slept in weeks" says I rolling my eyes like a nervy horse. She remains unmoved. "You may give me an anti-biotic and a few inhalers, and throw in a few sleepers, or at least some steroids" says I, imagining how quickly I could clean the house on a cocktail of the above. "I need to be at the top of my game, the papers have been alerted, the wine has been ordered and there are even women coming from Cork who will expect me to be hilarious, girl." 30 Deltacortil ought to do it. My Doctor calmly watches me. When the room has been filled with my rushing words, so many that they are trying to escape out the vents, she responds with a few of her own. They include denial, delay...

The First Year This day last year as kettles were boiling for tea up and down the country,  the Matron placed her fingers on my Mothers neck and called it. 5.31pm  -  End of Life . One announces a birth, one pronounces a death, but one rarely actually speaks about the process of either. The panting pains as a new human arrives to scream a lungful of air - The chain stoking rattle as another empties their lungs forever. The first breath -  the last gasp. Grief is a funny thing. The way you think about it, imagine it, dread it. It’s never what you expect. The balance beam of my place in the world snapped a chain, and swung loose.  Months with bent head braced waiting for a Guillotine of Grief to fall.  Not in a crash of blood and bone, but rather a slowly sliding scale of blade that chafes and cuts. People confiding on wet windy corners,  under inside - out umbrellas, the bag of logs dripping at your feet, red rimme...

I turn up 3 hours early on one day and not at all on another Scourged in the Festival Window Exhaling  And so it begins  Would you just mind looking at the spelling though ? Signing Scourge And so IT begins Collapses against galvanised for divine inspiration  Finds it in best. present.ever. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams - a Poets feet at Yeats at the Fringe Spring forward, Fall back. My Father, at the Launch, finally.  What I would love to be doing instead Gnome Sayin'  Everything's a photo opp  Opera Street Scourge chillin' Dog walking  Meeting the Pope at a Friary  It began with Mojitos and ended in whiskey sours  This knife wouldn't cut butter  Send someone for ice ....... and mint leaves