26/09/2026
Dementia Diaries. Saturday.
I had a lovely morning.
Bowling. The last drive of the season. Sunshine. Laughter. Everyone playing in good spirits.
And I played quite well! 😜
We play in the middle of a public park, and afterwards an old neighbour passed by. We stopped for a quick catch-up.
“How’s Frank doing?”
“Not too good at the moment.”
And I couldn’t believe how quickly I descended into complete darkness.
The tears are always so close to the surface these days.
It isn’t even self-pity.
It’s compassion.
Complete and utter devastation for Frank and the state he finds himself in.
His life.
His pain.
His suffering.
Of course I’m sad for me too.
Sad for the life we didn’t get to live over these past few years.
Sad for the loneliness of a life on my own, while my partner lives such a small, separate existence.
Often unreachable.
Sometimes babbling nonsense.
Sometimes affectionate and funny.
Still my Frank.
I’m sitting here with him now.
He’s out of bed for the first time in a few days and he’s more present than he has been recently.
My blue-eyed boy. 💙
He’s nodded off now, but it does my heart good just to see him sitting up, more alert, more there.
I’ve been pondering a lot recently about life and death.
It feels wrong to pray for him to die.
But I do find myself praying for his release from this awful existence.
Is that wrong?
And why aren’t people living with advanced dementia — and the families who love them — part of the assisted-dying conversation?
I understand completely why there are enormous concerns about abuse, coercion and safeguarding.
But I challenge anyone who feels strongly about this to spend time witnessing someone they love slowly decline and lose pieces of themselves to this dreadful disease.
It is brutal.
They call it ambiguous loss — losing your person while they are still physically here.
The man dozing in front of me has, in some ways, died many times over.
And every time I visit, another little piece of my heart is pierced.
I feel so much compassion for him.
And so much gratitude that he still knows me much of the time.
But sometimes I wonder…
Would it actually be easier if he had forgotten me?
Because then perhaps he wouldn’t know what he’s lost.
And perhaps I wouldn’t feel the weight of what we’ve lost quite so acutely.
I don’t know.
I don’t have answers.
Just a wife sitting beside her husband, trying to make sense of an utterly bewildering kind of grief.
💔💔💔💔
