There's comedy as well as tragedy in dementia – that's why I had to write a play about it

So much art responds to the devastation this disease brings – but it doesn’t address the joy, argues Louise Coulthard, who has written about her experiences of caring for her grandmother

Mary Rutherford (left) and Louise Coulthard perform in ‘Cockamamy‘ at the Hope Theatre this month (Alex Brenner)

I was always Gran’s Girl. Spending hours sampling her make-up and threading my little feet into her high heels, I matched her outfits, copied her recipes and memorised the lullabies she would sing me to sleep with.

She had been raised in the Lake District and owned the only shop in Eskdale Green, a modest village dwarfed by mountains. Everyone knew who Alice was. Famed locally for her stunning beauty and wicked sense of humour, she was a warm-hearted, no-nonsense country girl.

I’d sit on the shop counter with my bag of penny sweets as she’d regale me with tales of the old days. Her grandfather and all his sons wiped out in a single pit disaster. Rationed meat ‘n’ potato pie. Cycling along the railway tracks to the dance hall. Her worshipped Uncle Louis, killed at Arnhem in 1944.

I cherished these stories of a time gone by, a sepia-toned place where the people stuck together, their country under attack. We’d spend hours together sharing her memories.

Alice holding Louise as a child (Louise Coulthard)

In 2012, Gran was diagnosed with Vascular Dementia, and her world was to change again – this time like never before.

The signs had been creeping in for a while. She would answer the phone with “Hello, Eskdale Stores?” though she hadn’t worked there for 20 years. She thought money was going missing and a paranoia gripped her. A momentary flicker in her piercing blue eyes, hesitant to trust me anymore.

There are several stages in the inevitable degeneration of a person living with dementia, and that was certainly one of the hardest. She knew she was slipping away, and she knew we knew. Clinging desperately to lucidity, a fear clouded over her and like a confused child she would gaze, absently.

Alice managed to maintain a life at home, leaving the dirty plates in the sink to remind her she had eaten, and with signs on the back door that read: “Lock Me.” But as the years passed, she began to forget what a door was, and would shout for help, not knowing how to get out of a room any more.

She had little concern for the future, and a lot of her past was fading away, so we were always completely living for the present. I was getting to know an entirely new lady. It was an absurd but surprisingly wonderful experience.

Louise Coulthard and her grandmother Alice (Louise Coulthard)

And then it struck me: so much art and literature responds to the devastation this disease brings – but it doesn’t address the joy.

Sat in a bar one day, a play about my experiences with Gran just poured out of me. I was so full of pain, glee, frustration, regret and laughter that after scribbling stories and feelings onto the back of a receipt I had the outline for a play. I’d done bits of writing before, but this was the first time I had the passion and determination to produce a full-length piece.

It’s difficult when caring for someone with dementia because things can be simultaneously heartbreaking and hilarious. This is, however, perfect material for a play. Many of my experiences with Gran found their way into the script.

Gran rang me once in a furious rage because “that fancy lady your Dad likes” wouldn’t leave her living room. After a lot of detective work I established that she was referring to Judge Judy. I told her to turn the TV off, but after a lot of beeps I realised she was using the telephone instead of the remote.

Another time, after revealing that England footballer Steven Gerrard was her new boyfriend, Gran said: “I’m thinking of having another baby.” As a woman of 83 we decided that a doll would probably have to do instead.

Growing up, Alice was known locally as ‘a warm-hearted, no-nonsense country girl’ (Louise Coulthard)

She’d sing to this new baby, burping it and whisking him off to bed. It never seemed to have much of an appetite though. “My little one’s not eating much at the moment” she would say, shaking her head with worry.

One day, while tidying up, I flung the doll onto the sofa. “THE BABY!” yelped Gran. I was mortified and grasped the plastic child, rocking it, kissing it. Gran gave me a very concerned look and said with disdain: “It’s only a doll, Louise!” In a moment of lucidity, she thought I’d lost the plot.

After a while, Gran began to wander. She’d leave her front door wide open and drift off into the night. Luckily, where we’re from, everyone knows everyone and Gran was always returned home safely. But she’d also leave the hob on, and on one occasion she smacked her lovely carer. It was decided that it was best she went into a residential home.

When I’d visit the home, we’d go through the usual routine. Another patient, Roger, would have commandeered Gran’s single bed and so she’d threaten him with her walking stick for a while. We’d move out into the corridor where Anita and Gran would argue over who would die first, then we’d all go for a sing-along in the living room and laugh the whole thing off, Roger on piano.

I was consumed with guilt knowing Gran was in a home. But for the first time in years she was spending time with her peers and I’m quite sure that she actually enjoyed it.

One in six people will get dementia, and with the amount of friends, family, carers and medical professionals affected by it, I was adamant as I worked on the play that it should resonate with the experiences of real people.

At the time I was pulling pints in a pub in Battersea, and chatting to the punters about their own lives really impacted my writing.

Then the stars aligned: one day, while serving an ale to a woman named Rebecca Loudon, I learnt she was a director whose grandmother, too, had lived with dementia. She read my newly finished play, Cockamamy, and we became a team.

Given that I’m an actor, I also have the privilege to perform the play as well. I quite literally own the material, and that means I can bring a playfulness to my performance of it.

Mary Rutherford and Louise Coulthard bring playfulness to the deeply personal subject matter (Alex Brenner)

However, it doesn’t come without its complications, especially given the deeply personal subject matter. Gran died in December 2015, and it can sometimes be difficult to separate my own sadness from the play.

That’s where having Rebecca directing helps; she does a superb job of interrogating the text and my performance. From the beginning, she made sure it became an embellishment of my experience rather than a simple duplication of it.

I had been living with the remarkable actor, Mary Rutherford, in London for a while when Gran had dementia and there was no doubt in my mind that I wanted her to play Alice. She is utterly mesmerising and I’m honoured that she accepted the role of my stunning grandmother.

We previewed Cockamamy at the Camden Fringe in 2016, and it went so well we were awarded a fund to take the show to the Edinburgh Fringe last summer. We went on to win the Lustrum Award for Outstanding New Play and now we’re delighted to bring the show to the Hope Theatre in London.

The pain of this cruel disease doesn’t go away, but there is light to be found in the darkness. Cockamamy is a tribute to families both ripped apart and fused together by dementia.

The night Gran died I sat by her side, held her hand, and lulled her off to sleep with the nursery rhymes she once shared with me. I like to think she went with a song in her heart.

‘Cockamamy’ is at The Hope Theatre between 12 and 30 June (thehopetheatre.com)