OUR LONG GOODBYE

Hannah Riches, 49, has had to watch her husband fade away

- TANYA PEAREY

Watching Neil struggle to draw the hands and numbers on a clock face, I finally accepted what I had feared for months. My wonderful, articulate, clever, gregarious and capable husband wasn’t simply becoming forgetful and scatty. He hadn’t grown bored or uninterested in our family life. He had dementia – aged just 51.

Although that formal diagnosis in 2014 was upsetting, it was also a relief. There was a reason behind what we’d all been struggling with for a while. When Neil battled with those clock-face dementia tests, where he had to write clock numbers on a circle and then draw on the hands to show certain times, it was part of the confirmation of the disease. The first signs started around a year earlier – they were low-key at first – Neil kept losing things. He was vague on recent conversations. He’d ask if I’d like a cup of tea and then I’d find him in the kitchen washing up, all memory of the cuppa gone.

The girls were young, Milly six and Bessie four, and family life was hectic. I put his memory lapses down to our busy lives and the fact that he’d always been forgetful. We both worked – I ran my own business and Neil had a high-pressure job as a police driver. It was his work colleagues who first flagged up a potential problem. Neil, however, passed the occupational-health basic memory tests, but he was moved to an office job.

At home, I started noticing that he was struggling to recall large chunks of conversations about major events, such as selling our house. When it came to moving day, Neil crumbled. On reflection, I think his brain simply couldn’t cope with the upheaval and change, leaving him confused and distressed.