by My wife Lorraine can no longer walk or talk and is doubly incontinent. She now lives in a hospital bed in our front room in Surrey. And yet, despite the fact that Alzheimer’s disease has taken so much from her, the woman I fell in love with is still there. Lorraine may not recognize me – sometimes she looks at me, and doesn’t even see me – but she still laughs at the sound of my voice, and laughs when I play my favorite classical music, the Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia from Spartacus. We are both 77 now and ours is a love story that has lasted almost 60 years.
We met on a farm in New Zealand in 1969. After working as an engineer in the UK, I decided to travel – overland from North Africa, through Syria and Afghanistan, ending up in Nelson, a city in the north of South New Zealand. Island. I got a job picking tobacco: Lorraine, a Kiwi, was picking apples.
I remember sitting on the kitchen floor, and watching her walk in: Wow, I thought. Lorraine was a total knock-off, but she also had a girl-next-door quality that I liked – she was approachable, and quick to smile. Growing up in the Cargill Estuary, Lorraine was brought up to learn Scottish folk dancing as well as the Haka, which she would do throughout her life whenever the All Blacks played.
We came back to the UK together and set up home in the countryside near Croydon in Surrey, eventually marrying in 1980. Neither of us particularly wanted children, but we loved our dogs, soft-coated Wheaten Terriers. , and Lhasa apso. We threw ourselves into the business we started in our second bedroom, creating document binding machines that were eventually used around the world.
Our company took us to some very glamorous places. In 1986, we received the BBC Radio 4 Small Business Enterprise Award, presented by Prince Charles. We had a great passion for music – we often ended the evening at Ronnie Scott’s in London, where we would dance until the wee hours. And we loved to travel. Every place we visited, Lorraine would buy a dress. Hanging in the wardrobe was a “St-Tropez dress”, a “Marbella dress” and a “Barcelona dress”.
But we also loved our home life. We lived near a golf course, and I loved hearing Lorraine come back in her Toyota Rav 4, and the dogs barking. For sharp, fast readers, we would often play a game where we would think of a long word and check if the other person could spell it.
In 2010, aged 64, Lorraine suddenly seemed to lose her sense of smell. Soon after, she started talking strangely: in unfinished sentences, rather than short sentences. “Am I going to…?” she would say, then walk away without finishing what she was going to say. When I pointed this out, Lorraine seemed to be aware of it, but unable to do anything about it. Although this was frustrating at times, I wasn’t worried – I got used to it and came to understand her.
But other things began to change. Always one to choose the perfect outfit for the occasion, Lorraine was lethargic about the way she dressed. She would choose the outdated sweater with the holes, rather than the newer stylish top. The Barcelona and St-Tropez dresses meant nothing to her anymore.
In the kitchen, Lorraine salted the potatoes two or three times, burned her hand on the stove without reaching, and left the gas on over dinner.
It honestly didn’t occur to me that there was anything wrong with Lorraine. I guess I thought this was a natural part of aging – I had barely heard of Alzheimer’s disease, and I certainly didn’t think it was about us. Moreover, these strange events only lasted a few minutes a day, and the rest of the time she was “normal”. So I made practical changes: switching from gas to electricity, and reversing Lorraine’s wardrobe.
Finally, in 2012 I took Lorraine to the GP for pain in her right hip. The doctor clearly saw something troubling in Lorraine’s behavior and referred us to a memory clinic. The psychiatrist there told us that this could be the beginning of Alzheimer’s. How could this be? I wonder. How could it be happening to us? Lorraine was always a healthy person.
At the clinic, Lorraine was taken into another room for a memory test. She scored 16/30. I thought this was pretty good, but the consultant said she’d better get all the questions right. When Lorraine was asked to name the president of the United States (then Barack Obama), she replied: “I don’t know, but he has a dog called Bo.” She could not name photographs of an elephant or a tiger.
The doctor gently told us that Lorraine had Alzheimer’s. I asked if she could take any pills, and she told us yes, but they didn’t work, and “there’s nothing to do”. As you can imagine, I was very upset, but I decided to put on a cheerful face – and this has been my attitude ever since. As Lorraine never knew anything was wrong with her, I made the decision that we would continue to live our lives as normal, as long as we could.
OK, I said, so Lorraine has Alzheimer’s, but we’ll continue to do the same things as if she hadn’t. For the rest of the 2010s, we continued to travel. We spent winters in Tenerife during much of the pandemic. Most of the time, we were happy, but there were some difficult moments for me – like the time I took Lorraine back to Kaiteriteri beach in New Zealand. It was where we first met: I allowed her to remember, and she was heartbroken when she couldn’t.
We made other adjustments. Even before her diagnosis, Lorraine did not like being out with a group of friends in a restaurant for example, and often wanted to go home early. But even when Lorraine was in a wheelchair, I would hold her hands and dance around. We joined the local Alzheimer’s Singing for the Brain group run by the brilliant Peter Edwards.
Sadly, over the last few years, Lorraine has gone into a bit of a decline. She is now confined to a hospital bed in the living room. I sleep upstairs and wake up regularly in the night, to go downstairs and check on her.
This time last year. I realized we needed the help of professional caregivers, and we ended up finding a great agency called Helping Hands. It now takes two people to wash and bathe Lorraine – we have the same people coming in three days a week from 9 to 9.30am. The rest is up to me.
Our life together now is different from the life I expected, but I am completely committed to my wife. She’s still “there”, and to this day, it really helps when I play her music – she especially loves it when I play. Memory from Cats on the guitar. Last year, I was worried that if I died, no one would know Lorraine’s story, so I made a video called “Lorraine’s Goodbye”.
The way I see this is just another phase in life. It’s like when you end up playing a professional sport like hockey or rugby. You hang up your boots, but life goes on – it just enters another state. There is no “poor Lorraine”. I see us both as lucky: we have a bond that has lasted a lifetime.
As told to Miranda Levy
The IS Alzheimer’s AssociationThe new Slán Slán campaign will start on March 22
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