Early in 2010, I began to understand that Bill could no longer think ahead.

When relatives were coming to stay, for example, he did not understand that they were coming, until they had arrived. It didn’t matter that I was making up extra beds or that I was saying: “Your brother will arrive tomorrow!”  Bill could not make meaning out of my words or actions.

Recently, I read an article in The Sunday Mail  (Body + Soul, 10 June, 2012).

It corroborated this new understanding.  It was titled: Dementia Patients Can’t Imagine Future, and it told the reader what I already knew. People with dementia, it said “find it hard to look forward to events or to understand long-term consequences.”

I found this understanding to be particularly touching when, after Bill had left hospital in the April, we started to make plans for attending Matt and Julie’s wedding in May.  Since Bill was still very fragile, I didn’t know whether we would even make it to the wedding, but I determined to think positively and took Bill off to buy new clothes.  I was pleasantly surprised when he withstood, so well, the two-hour ordeal of fitting on trousers and jackets, shirts and ties.  He looked very dapper in his new outfit and I began to think that maybe we were going to get to that wedding after all.

But nothing comes easily when you’re dealing with dementia and, as it turned out, that night was the first of many that saw Bill waking at 2am to go through a bizarre ritual. Each night, when he woke, he would go downstairs, turn on all the lights, retrieve his new clothes from the downstairs cupboard and try to put them on.  Invariably, he would manage to get the shirt on, would get one leg into the trousers and then would contrive to get one arm into the jacket.  The tie would go round his neck correctly but, each night, would have to be secured by several granny knots.  Eventually, he would go to sleep wearing the shirt and tie and I would have to fight to get them off him the next day. That shirt was so dirty around the neck by wedding day that I had to launder it three times before he could wear it.

Bill was, I understand now, trying to sort out what the new clothes were all about.  I had told him about the impending ceremony, how Matt and Julie were getting married and how guests were flying in from all over, but because he couldn’t imagine the future, he didn’t comprehend.  You can imagine my delight, then, when I observed the light-bulb moment that told me that Bill finally understood.  We were sitting in the Chapel, smiling at the wedding party that was standing up on the stage.

“Oh, I know what it is now,” Bill cried.  “But who’s the girl?”

He had known Julie for over three years but he didn’t recognise her, all dressed up in her beautiful wedding gear.

I was so happy that I made it to that wedding.  Bill kept up well and we had a wonderful time.