THE CONVERSATION:

[Daughter] The home? It’s a nursing home. It’s one of the best choices of the places we considered, and the options we considered.. it’s really one of the best.  And we’re all going to go with you tomorrow morning.

[Mom] Oh God. Ah, come on. Have any of you seen the home?

[Tim] Yeah. We’ve all seen it, actually.

[Mom] And what’s it like?

Tim: It’s small.

Mom:  Small, yes. To start with, but that’s temporary, until they get you your own room.

[Mom] Oh, I’m losing any kind of control over my own life at all. The other thing is, and I understand the difficulty of all this, but there’s never been even a mention of, ‘Oh, you could come and live with me…” It would be very nice if that had happened. It’s just sort of ..‘ Get rid of Mom, and .. (she trails off)

TIM (V-O): We have no reply to this. And nothing can soften our brutal choice. We tell her we’ve had to act quickly and to take the first space available. That she’ll be safer and more comfortable with ‘round the clock care. But how do you say you don't have “room” for your mother?

One thing is clear from the look on her face. She knows exactly what is happening to her.

MUSIC:  she plays When Your Lover Has Gone

FOR CBC NEWS SUNDAY and THE DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL

If you listened, you could hear in her music the subtle signs of her sure decline.  Searching over and over for notes and chords. Getting lost in the tunes she’d played for years.

Now, we children have gathered in her apartment — not for the first time — to broach with our mother the subject of “the home.” And nothing can soften our brutal choice.

Wilson’s painterly offering ... provides an excellent springboard for thought and discussion about Alzheimer’s Disease.

Deborah Bruser, librarian, Yellowknife

DIRECTOR’S NOTE:

Upright Grand didn't start out to be a film about dementia, or Alzheimer's, or mental illness.  In fact it didn't start out as a documentary film at all. It began as a kind of modest home-movie memento, a family album of my mother and her music. I wanted a way to preserve them both, to have them last -- and you can hear in that, of course, the cry of the child wanting to keep something huge from slipping away.  The film is in no small way about what even grown children can feel when they're faced with this. And so I hope it will be of help to the families of Alzheimer's patients, a kind of unblinking guide to what may well be ahead.

I began filming one "Bleak Midwinter"  — the name of her favourite Christmas carol — while my mother was still in her cosy apartment with its Persian rugs and Crown Derby china, and the “upright” version of a grand piano tucked up against the wall.  Over the course of about two years, the film follows both her and the piano on their harrowing journey — “harrowing” being, I guess, the perfect word, coming as it does from what her farming forebears in Saskatchewan did to make their cold, hard land bear seed.

There' s something of a harsh beauty in that.  As, I hope, you will also find in this film.

Tim Wilson

portrait of Gerry Wilson by Sheila Spence