I have to share this with you.   I have to share the pain I felt for you and for me and for all the people touched by this disease today.

I sat at her memorial today.  She is, but now she was.  She was a very special friend to a friend of mine for five years.

He is my friend. He came into my life some 7 years ago.  I met his wife in his house. She was soft and gentle and tried very hard to concentrate on the knitting in her hands. She tried not to drop another stitch, not to make another hole in the square she was knitting. Once she was a keen knitter, knitting complicated patterns, a very handy wife to this man.  A talented pianist, teaching many children with her sweetness to love music like she did.  Humming their way through school.

But she didn’t get up to make me a cup of tea. She concentrated on her fingers holding the needles.  He got up to make us a pot of tea.

He was the one who brought his wife to me. He was the one who left his wife with me. He was the one who left us, not looking back.  And I was relieved when he left like that. I couldn’t face to see what was on his face, what was in his eyes. The raw emotion of letting go of your wife after so many years, to a woman you met not too long ago.  I took the hand of his wife in mine, and led her into Jura Care, now her home.

This was a long time ago.

He came to visit often. He tried very hard to stay strong, and to be a part of her life.  He wanted to be.  At first, she enjoyed his visits, the chocolates he fed her.  He took her for short drives, thinking that she would love to escape the walls of her new home. At first, she did, she enjoyed the laughter and the beauty of the drive. But then she came back disorientated, confused when he brought her back. He stopped taking her for ice cream.

From then on, he only came to visit her. She would sit and smile at this man and he would believe that she still smiled at him.  But she was being polite, still knowing that social skill. She would say hello when he said hello. She would say she is fine, when he asked her how she was.   That was the right thing to do, and she still remembered.  She would hold his hand when he took her on a walk on the farm, He would try to make small talk with her, tell her about the children, show her photos of the grandchildren.  But she only smiled at him when he smiled at her. She would only love the little people in the photos, making motherly noises, still being the women loving little ones like always. But he would put the photos back in his pocket, and she would just stare, not really hearing what he was saying about their grandchildren.  And later he stopped…

He came again and again and always left hunched over.

And then he phoned me one day.  We cried as we spoke. He was trying so hard to hold on to something that was left of his beautiful wife. He couldn’t do this anymore. Deep inside he was dying a little bit as he drove away every time from this smiling woman just sitting next to him, this woman who was just walking alongside him, unaware of him. He couldn’t do this anymore.  Maybe he was looking for someone to give him permission to stay away?  Maybe he couldn’t decide that himself? Maybe he wanted to?  Maybe I wanted him to stay away? Maybe I couldn’t carry on seeing the man with the pain in his blue eyes every time? Maybe I couldn’t handle the pain of a once happily married couple, being destroyed by this disease, and still so young.

They were supposed to enjoy their new retirement together. Now they would have the time for each other, to share their dreams of growing old together. But that would never be…

I told him what he needed to hear, but I told him what I believed.  She was happy and content, she was living her life with this disease in a safe and much-loved environment. In her world was no place for him anymore.

And so he phoned me often, to talk.

Today I sat at a memorial.  The memorial of his special friend.  He met her five years ago. She lost her husband to Alzheimer’s. They understood each other. They filled an open wound for each other, ribbed open by this disease.

But he lost her. He lost her to cancer.

He was confused. How could he lose another special woman in his life like this? How could he lose this woman, caring for her, helping her until her last breath?

I slipped into the church, almost late. The church bench was hard. The piano was playing softly in the dim light.

I moved around on the bench, not because it was so hard, but I couldn’t bear seeing him, the back of his now silver grey hair. I moved until there was another grey head between us.

When the service was over, I walked outside for fresh air, just to breathe and to get away from the pain filling the building.

He was standing there. I knew I had to go over to him, I wanted to.  I wanted him to have a piece of his wife, even if it was just me. The woman who loves his wife and cares for his wife every day for all these years.

We held each other, hanging onto something that we didn’t understand.

I was there, a closeness to his wife.

I hugged his son.

I hugged his daughter.

There were no words between us. Just the silence of pain. A silence of this disease robbing him of his wife, and them of their mother…….. and a very special friend today…