This post might  be a misstep or it might be a step in the right direction. I really don’t know.

Here’s the thing, two of my very good friends died not too long ago. Their deaths really rattled me. I’ve begun to wonder if I should expand this blog beyond how to carry on after dementia? My own experience, my focus, has been limited to dealing with my husband’s death and the fallout his years of struggle left behind.

Three of my grandparents, plus my father and his brother lived to their late eighties, two to near 100. My great grandfather Tommy was 87 when he died in 1948, a “good age,” people said. I remember when each of them passed and I remember that their deaths were not all that shocking because, although each had ailments, the common explanation was they died of old age.

I’m “old-aged” myself now. In the past year alone a number of other friends my age passed away too. 

Dealing with the loss of a friend, I’ve come to realize, is different from losing a family member. No matter how old you are, or your friend was, for some reason you don’t expect to lose a contemporary. We may be grandparents, even great-grandparents, plus we’re achey, creaky and probably hard of hearing, but we’re not ready yet!

When we lose a family member —  spouse, parent, distant aunt — we gather round. But when it’s a friend, even a close friend, we stand back to let the family congregate. Oh we send cards and flowers, but we don’t want to intrude. We expect to be saddened by a family death, but we’re surprised by how bereft we feel when a dear friend dies. That’s true for me anyway.

One of the two whose deaths shocked me was “Sherri,”a friend since fifth grade; “Joy,” a friend of 20 some years, was the other. With both there were thoughts and advice, ears to listen and gossip to share. And laughter, always laughter.

Joy became quite ill very suddenly and then she was gone before anyone could comprehend the loss. Sherri  had been dealing with a taxing disease for several years, but she carried on, looked after her affairs and just a few months ago made a long distance move to be near her daughter. Turns out, on April 1 Sherri had written and addressed my birthday card, included a photo of the two of us at our 50th class reunion, and put it on the table to take to the mailbox. Her daughter found her mother later that day. Apparently, one of the last things Sherri did was write that card. Her daughter tucked  her own note in to explain what had happened and sent it to me.

I emailed the sad news about Sherri to mutual friend Bonnie — the two of us date back to 1942 when I was three, she, two-and-a-half.  She replied quickly. “If it hadn’t been for your birthday and that she wrote a card, we might never have known she died!”  she said.

Lately I’ve been digging through my “archives” as daughter Leslie calls my labeled, chronologically-organized memory boxes. I came across a birthday card Sherri sent in 2020. She wrote “Not my usual card but the best I can do on such short notice.” I can hear her laughing, her wry sense of humor intact. We never forgot each other’s birthdays. In another file was a birthday card from Joy. She signed it “BFF.” I was thrilled to know that this vivacious woman who had so many good friends considered me a best friend too.

 Some days after the news about Sherri had been absorbed, Bonnie sent another message. “I don’t give permission to my life-long friend [me!] to die!”  And she always said I was the bossy one!

True friends never leave you wondering whether you are friends or not.

She slammed the bottle of purple ink on the desk, her eyes daggers behind thick glasses. “Put. Your. Names. On. Your. Papers, Class!” she said through gritted teeth. She gave everyone an F even though there were three or four of us prissy-pants who had done as she wanted!

I panicked a week ago when I realized that except for the introductory post my name didn’t appear anywhere on this new site. You’d think after a lifetime writing papers, reports, articles, advertising copy, columns, books and blogs I wouldn’t forget to include my name. I  spent most of a Sunday afternoon trying to come up with a way to introduce myself, after the fact, without being too obvious. 

The roadblocks that WordPress presents to a person of a certain age—just turned 84, for instance—stopped me cold. I whined to daughter Leslie that day, even as I told her my brain was too numb to spend any more time trying to solve the current problem. I asked if she would put her best thinking cap on and come up with some ideas for subtitles that would incorporate my name. By the following morning she’d emailed ten possibilities. That gave me the shove I needed and although I didn’t use any of them, together we came up with a solution. A subtitle/byline that sums up what I do:  “Judith Clarke writes, laughs, persists.”  Tada-a-a. 

Now those five words don’t seem to have much to do with this blog’s mission: encourage those who are going through what I’ve already gone through but, in fact, it does. Writing is my medium, my method, i.e. I laughed at myself for being so silly as to have forgotten my “byline.” I believe laughter is a salve for pain. I believe in laughing. I persist because I’m stubborn, I persist because I want to carry on. That’s a simplistic example, true, but you get my drift.

Carrying on after losing a loved one to dementia or to any other cause is not easy. There are no instructions, no primer, no maps to show the way through. It’s a grind slowed by layers of self doubt. There are bad days and good. Slowly, very slowly, the good days come to the fore, the bad days retreat.

In these months since Peter’s death I’ve accepted that I can’t seem to remember names any more—names of  people, things, movies, books.  A byproduct of years of caregiving or me sliding into dementia myself? probably neither.

Most of my friends say the same of themselves. We laugh together. And all of us lose our glasses and our phones—in our houses—every day. We have extra pairs of glasses, but only one phone each. I often find my black phone on the black kitchen counter. The only reason I still have a land line is so I can call my cell when I’ve lost it.

My daughters reassure me about my forgetfulness. We can’t remember things either, Mom, they say. The idea of them being as forgetful at their young ages as I am at mine is laughable too.

“They laughed much harder than the memory was funny because it felt
good to laugh.” Shannon Hale

Book one. The package arrived a week after my husband Peter passed away. Inside was Healing after loss, daily meditations of working through grief, a little book by Martha W. Hickman. It came from Marsha, a member of the talkative group of friends who’ve socialized one Wednesday a month for years. Early on, we were a silly  bunch who paraded on July 4, went to concerts and plays, played canasta and, not just incidentally, wore red hats and purple garments.

As the years passed we’ve aged of course and our outings and cavorting have tamed. We even gave up the red hats. Over time we’ve lost too many members, too many spouses. The author packed her book with wise words and thoughtful quotes for each day of the year. At the time, I was planning a celebration of Peter’s life to take place in September. Curious, I opened the book to August 15, the date of his death, and there was the perfect passage to use for his celebration. This, in particular, sang to me:

Can we, in the air that surrounds us,
the sunshine that bathes us with its warmth and light,
the life that surges in our own being,
imagine the abiding presence of our loved one?

I am no longer the religious person I was brought up to be, but those words resonated.

Book two, Why don’t you write my eulogy now so I can correct it? promises chuckles. Written by Patricia Marx and illustrated by Roz Chast, the author offers quotes from her mother. “If you ever have children, don’t let me babysit,” made me laugh out loud.

The point of today’s post is, although I preached laughter as medicine throughout “Dementia isn’t funny,” I suddenly realized I hadn’t threaded any humor into the previous post! So after the fact, I encourage you to read Marx’s book. There are giggles to be had, but sage advice too: “Show me now what you’re going to wear to my funeral so I can let you know whether it’s appropriate,” said the mom of the woman who wrote the book.

Now I wouldn’t tell my own daughters, Carolynn and Leslie, what to wear to my funeral or Peter’s, but I did tell them several years ago that I had written our obituaries. They groaned. They didn’t want to know about it. We weren’t going to die! But then one of us did.

And the obit was ready. All I had to do was fill in dates, find an appropriate photo, and Bob’s yer uncle. Done. Leslie helped by downloading what I’d written onto the newspaper site, but I insisted on proofreading again, just to be sure. I’m a stickler for typos, extra punctuation and spelling. When the obit appeared the following morning, I moaned. The all important ‘e”at the end of Clarke was missing!  And I hadn’t caught it!  That “e” was so important to Peter’s Granddad Alf that he struggled through miles of red tape back in the 1930s to get an “e” added to the end of Clark. There were too many families in England with C-l-a-r-k as their surname, he opined. He wanted his family to be C-l-a-r-k-e. Then some 90 years later I, the granddaughter-in-law he never met, forgot the “e” on his grandson’s name in his obituary! Peter would have laughed, Alf, not so much! 

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine. Proverbs, 17:12

Healing after loss, daily meditations for working through grief, Martha W. Hickman, William Morrow, 2002
Why don’t you write my eulogy now so I can correct it?  Patricia Marx and Roz Chast, Celadon Books, NY, 2019

Maybe I was too hasty thinking I could write an “after dementia” blog. All week I’ve struggled to write a third post for “…and carry on.” If I were a screen writer I’d say, when I lost my leading man, Peter, I lost my focus! But if Peter were here, his eyes would twinkle even as he said, “Stop whinging and carry on, Missus.” I can hear him now!

Carry on? I’ll carry on.

A few months after my husband’s death  a good friend asked if I was relieved. I nodded. Awful to admit to that, I thought, but Peter’s long slog through the dementia swamp was a trial for both of us. He couldn’t express what he felt, but in the later stages, whenever I found him sitting, elbows on knees. head propped on his hands, I knew. “You’ve had enough,  haven’t you?” I’d ask, using his  words for “I’m fed up!” He didn’t understand what was wrong, only that he wasn’t himself anymore and he didn’t like it one bit. All I could do was make endless cups of tea—nice cuppa Rosy—and he’d be OK for a while.

My own relief came from the caregiver’s perspective. I didn’t want to lose him, of course not, but I’d been stretched as far as I could go. I saw  myself as a powdery old rubber band ready to crumble. No snap left. I made myself endless cuppas, but they’re only good in the moment. My friend acknowledged she’d felt the same when her mother died, also of dementia. Another friend, going through similar circumstances, confessed to feeling as if she were guilty of a crime. Her eyes were a deer’s eyes caught in headlights. I understand, I told her. It’s OK to feel that way.  Flimsy help, I knew. I began to dig through the files of articles and notes I’ve made over the years to find answers.

Then, a few days ago I came across a wonderful blog called “What’s your grief,”  written by Eleanor Haley and Litsa Williams. It’s a site for grieving people and those who support them personally and professionally.  It is an excellent resource. The following is excerpted from a post Haley wrote several years ago: “Relief after a death: the unspoken grief emotion.”  You can read the entire post here: https://whatsyourgrief.com/relief-after-a-death-the-unspoken-emotion

 “Although none of you want your loved one to die, it’s only human to feel relief when their pain and suffering comes to an end. It’s also human to feel a tinge of relief when the distress you felt as a result of having to watch your loved one struggle has [ended].  …As…common as the notion of relief is in grief, it seems [as if] grievers often [hang on to it] as though it’s a deep dark secret…relief feels like something they should be ashamed of, feels wrong or [perhaps] something they shouldn’t admit to. …People can experience many emotions at the same time, even emotions that seem at odds with another. “Mixed emotions” at their worst.

Those words were what I was trying to say from the top. 

Mixed emotions still trickle through my days. At last I realize that it’s OK to bask in the calm, pamper myself, read a book cover to cover in one sitting and, of course, always take time for a cup of Rosey. 

The watch changed today. Oh! I don’t mean Standard Time to Daylight Savings time. Nor do I mean the timepiece I wore on my wrist before a phone that takes pictures replaced it. No, I’m talking about the “watch” that one daughter, Carolynn, performed for 19 days while her sister Leslie and husband Martin were away for 17 days. At 7:00 this morning Carolynn set off on her long drive home. At 10:00 I picked Leslie and Martin up at the airport. Both emotional occurrences for seldom-emotional me.

For weeks I fussed at my daughters’ conniving—as I perceived it—for Carolynn to “hang out with me” while her sister and brother-in-law were away. Not that I didn’t appreciate the concern. Not that I didn’t appreciate Carolynn’s visit. Not that I didn’t appreciate the fact that I’m slamming right up against 84—although I don’t appreciate that fact—and at my age a trip on the basement stairs could be detrimental to my life or limbs.

Leslie and Martin, who live just over a mile away, share the brunt of  “looking after mom,” even though they don’t call it that.  They check on me a lot, unobtrusively, but not as unobtrusively as they suppose. Although 496 miles distant, Carolynn sends a cheery good morning message almost every day and reminds me frequently that any time I need her she can be here in 10 hours. Leslie helps impressively when I am muddled over a simple issue, and she makes vats of soup and countless muffins to share.

How lucky am I?

“Here’s how to respond when your kids reach out to you about your well-being” is the title of an article I clipped from the paper last October. Written by Heidi Godman, Harvard Health Publications, the piece offered advice and insight from Abby Altman, geriatric psychologist at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dr. Suzanne Salamon, associate chief of gerontology at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.  “You’ve spent most of your life worrying abut your children’s health and safety, and it can feel uncomfortable and unfamiliar when the roles are reversed,” they say.  “You should keep in mind, that these conversations come from a place of concern and love.”

I know that.

“How much should you allow your kids to help?” was the section that grabbed my attention. “Be frank about asking them to do whatever you need,” they say. “You may not realize that you need help. But there are times when you may.” They use the example of forgetting to take medications or not getting timely refills. I haven’t reached that stage yet, but I was having a terrible time opening  jars and bottles to the point I’d set the them aside until Martin popped in. One day last May he arrived brandishing a present for me—a jar opener! He was proud of himself, Leslie less so because she’d asked him to get one when he was out shopping. He was to bring it home so she could wrap it appropriately for Mother’s Day. Either way, stubborn jar lids haven’t given me any trouble for months.

Asking for help doesn’t come easy to me. I’d guess it doesn’t come easy for most mature  parents. We want to believe we can still take care of ourselves, even knowing we can’t do it all anymore. We want to believe we’re as spry as we were when they were toddlers, though in truth any toddler in our lives now is likely to be more than we can handle…or lift!  We want to believe we’re as knowledgeable about the world at large as we were 60 years ago, but the fact is, so much that goes on in our world today is way beyond our ability to comprehend.  At least that’s true of me.

Slowly I’m accepting help from Martin on the little things I used to deal with, or that Peter dealt with.  During his long illness I had to manage things that I’d never considered before.  And I did OK-ish. Now that I’m that much older I’ve dropped the ball…and I never was very good at catching any ball, anytime, anywhere. So Martin reminds me, or takes over for me, looking after the car for instance, or he bails me out with computer related problems.

Bill, Carolynn’s husband, is equally helpful, but he is 496 miles away. I keep a list of certain jobs for when they visit. Sometimes I message him with a picture of something that is broken and he helps me fix it via texts. This past Christmas he made quick work of  small tasks on my Billy-do list. Not on my list was an emergency repair accomplished under stress. As has happened rather frequently over the years, the drainpipe from kitchen sink disposal to the sewer line got clogged. Jammed solid! Bill got to work but it wasn’t as simple as plunging, pouring chemicals down the drain, or using a snake. No, this was s saw the pipe apart in two places, drain it into strategically-placed bucket in the basement, put it back together again, all before the rest of the family arrived for dinner.

Nowadays, when Leslie holds out her hand to help me exit her car or Martin’s truck, I accept. Or when Carolynn cooks most meals when she’s here “hanging out” for nearly three weeks, I don’t argue. When I spend a weekend with Leslie and Martin at their little river hideaway and Leslie tells me to sit and relax while she cooks, I do. When Carolynn insisted she’d prepare and serve friends I’d invited around when she was here, I gave in.

The experts say, “Don’t feel that you’re bothering your kids. You’ve been trying to stay as independent as possible. You’ll be healthier if everything is in order, and your kids will likely be willing and happy to assist you.”

I’ve been convinced.

“Responses to your adult children should express some appreciation for the feedback like, ‘Thanks for thinking of me.'”

The second post to this, my newest blog, has been a very long time coming, six months to be exact. Not for lack of ideas, no, it’s the not knowing how to set up a new blog format ten years after I started my first two, “Wherever you go, there you are” in 2013  and “Dementia isn’t funny” in 2014. WordPress has changed a lot since then. I’ve been absolutely stymied trying to decipher the WP Happiness Engineers’ answers to my constant questions. Over the winter  holidays I gave my brain a rest, then a few weeks ago I had a serendipitous wake-up.

Paragraph one, chapter three  of Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout’s latest book, Lucy by the sea shoved me back on track. The words not only jumped off the page at me, they yelled! Lucy, whose second husband David had died recently, muses, “It has been said that the second year of widowhood is worse than the first—the idea being, I think, that the shock has worn off and now one has to simply live with the loss, and I had been finding that to be true… But now there were times I felt that I was just learning of David’s death  for the first time. And I would be privately staggered by grief. And to be in this place [remote Maine cabin] where he had never been—I was really dislocated is what I mean.” Lucy by the Sea, pp 47,Elizabeth Strout, Random House, 2022

Those 91 words imprinted on my brain as if they were boldface/italic and highlighted with a fluorescent green marker. It wasn’t my brain, it was my psyche in the background dealing with the loss.

My first year of widowhood, August 2021-22, zoomed along. Following the celebration of my husband’s life at the end of that September I went home with daughter Carolynn to New York State for three weeks. Spending that much time without any responsibilities with Carolynn and husband Bill was welcome comfort for me. And to see the glorious fall colors at their peak in the Adirondacks again gave me a real boost!  Thus October passed.

Christmas 2021, Samantha and Jeremiah, our adult grandchildren, and their partners weren’t coming home, so daughter Leslie, her husband Martin, my Westie Pippa and I spent a whiteish Christmas with Carolynn and Bill. The change kept me—well, all of us—buoyed. Then, the next year from early June to mid-July I had a long summer get-away, first at Carolynn and Bill’s, then on Cape Cod with most of our small family.

So I awoke on the August 15, 2022 anniversary in an altered state really. The entire 12 months had been so out of the ordinary for me that I felt adrift, “dislocated” as Lucy said. I hadn’t planted herbs or any annuals in my garden that spring, hadn’t done my July ice cream social for friends, hadn’t written a blog post for the new blog I’d planned—this new blog—nor done much of anything at all really. I was determined to write.

But my determination took a back seat for the rest of the year. In September Carolynn and I went on our long-planned mother/daughter trip to Alaska. And in November I spent a week in Florida visiting a friend.

I had written drafts that needed tweaking, but I didn’t get to work until January! For six months I’d struggled and fretted and very likely drove the many WordPress helpers ’round the bend with my incessant questions and pleas for help. WP, I groused, employed people who’d cut their teeth on computers, and had grown up with the lingo and technical know-how. I, on the other hand, learned to type on a 1950’s Royal Typewriter, in 1951, mind you. I dealt with carbon copies, typewriter erasers, inky fingers, sticking platens. Uploads, passwords, RAMs, ROMS and URLs remain a foreign language to  me.

But after reading that particular paragraph in Lucy by the Sea, I had a brain-jolting ah-ha moment. I realized that least fifty percent of my first year of widowhood had been spent dealing with tough decisions and red tape I’d never experienced before. With Leslie’s help I “dealt with the loss.”

Last year, when both daughters took early retirement after successful careers—Carolynn, an oncology nurse and Leslie, a Professor of Special Education—I so wished Peter were at their parties to share my pride. When my Pippa needed eye surgery followed by long two months wearing a cone and needing eyes drops in both eyes for the rest of her life, I wanted Peter’s hand to hold. This past Christmas when family was gathered, with our first great-grandchild under the tree, I wanted Peter to be there to make little Ember giggle. I wanted to hear him tease Samantha and Lydia, the two moms-to-be, about their impending motherhood. How he would have triumphed at the great-granddad role.

For the three years Peter lived in memory care I tried to keep life as normal for him as possible. We had tea and biscuits every time I visited; when I have my afternoon cuppa now I think of him. Before each visit I checked the tv schedule for his favorite football teams’ matches; I still cheer when Chelsea, Arsenal or Fulham wins a match. When  I see an older couple walking their dog in a tv commercial I wish it were Peter and I. When silly little things get me into a tizzwizz, I hear him say, “Cheer up, love, might never ‘appen,” and I laugh.

These first six months of my second year of widowhood—August 2022 to today—have definitely been “staggering” at times, but with all the support from family and friends it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. I do know the spark I got from reading Lucy’s thoughts made me realize that my frustrations writing this post and readying it to publish were part and parcel of  all that went before.

Courage does not always roar.
Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying,
“I will try again tomorrow.”  
Mary Anne Radmacher, writer and artist.

The slogan  created at the beginning of World War II— Keep Calm and Carry On — was intended to bolster the stoicism and tenacity of the British people. However, the posters were never used. But in 2001 a cache was unearthed and subsequently featured on BBC television’s “Antiques Roadshow.” Since then the phrase has been adapted for use in multiple ways around the world: Keep Calm and Read a Book! Keep Calm I’m The Doctor! Keep Calm and Blog On! to name a few.

Now I’ve adapted the slogan for my use. My newest blog is a continuation to my “Dementia isn’t funny” (2014-21). That one chronicled my stoic English husband’s 16-year goodbye that ended August 15, 2021.  I discontinued  that  one after his passing.

* * *

The year following Peter’s death lagged as if the calendar’s pages were glued together, yet at the same time they whirled by so quickly I felt as if I were a dervish.

Peter’s death was not unexpected of course. A dementia diagnosis has only one outcome whether Vascular, Alzheimer’s, Frontotemporal, Huntington’s, Lewy-Body or other forms. There are no cures and the few available drugs work only for the short term, if at all. To be sure, Peter careered downward rapidly during what turned out to be his final months. The Covid crisis played a huge part for many reasons — no visitors were allowed, staff was overworked and underpaid and many quit. With no frequent  family oversight many residents didn’t get the care they needed. I know Peter didn’t.

On July 20, 2021, not long after visitors were permitted again, Peter experienced his best day in a long, long time. We watched the final stage of the Tour de France together. He was totally present, completely engaged! Within days, however, he lost ground dramatically. The weeks immediately following his passing were blurred. Fortunately, daughters Carolynn and Leslie kept me anchored.

Once the immediate shock wore off I dug in. That’s how I deal. There were a confounding number of details to be attended to, but with Leslie’s help they were ticked off efficiently. Carolynn helped me plan a celebration of Peter’s life, an event that gave all of us a boost to, well, to carry on.

* * *

As 2021 blended into 2022 I had a bit of an edge navigating the dreaded “firsts” that layer on after a loved one’s death — Thanksgiving, Christmas, anniversaries, birthdays, weddings. For one thing, Peter had lived in a memory care facility his final three years. Plus, during our 40-year marriage, his demanding job kept him away from home for days, weeks, sometimes months! I joke that I had a lot of “practice” being on my own. Then too, I’ve always been a bit of a hermit, a loner, so I managed well enough. That tendency helped me through the first year — not something I would advise necessarily, but it worked for me.

Over the summer months, as August 15, 2022 loomed, little things subdued any inclination to mope. It helped enormously that I had a five-week summer vacation with my daughters, sons-in-law, Bill and Martin, and granddaughter Samantha and her wife Lydia. Then too, grandson Miah and his partner Caitlyn had a baby in May — our first great-grandchild! Great-granddad would’ve been in his element. His gift for enchanting little ones with his silly faces and nonsense antics was family legend.

Throughout, friends and neighbors have been supportive in little ways without getting too “mushy.” They know I don’t do mushy. Every time our landline rings, I smile when I hear the message Peter recorded years ago. One friend calls just to hear his voice, then she hangs up and calls me on my cellphone.

The display of photos I used at the celebration of Peter’s life in September leans against our bedroom wall. I look at them often…he was so photogenic…that smile! 

In August, when I called to make a minor change to our homeowner’s insurance, I mentioned that my husband had passed away in 2021 and perhaps his name should be removed from the policy. “Oh, I’ll put that in our records…when did he die?” she asked. When I told her she said, “That’s coming up soon, isn’t it? I’m so sorry.” Her voice was so kind, even a bit teary. A brief few minutes made a difference that day.

So although I made it through the first 12 months rather easily, all things considered, there are “first year” tasks I still haven’t dealt with — donating his clothes, giving away the Cutty Sark model he wasn’t able to finish, his collection of 78 rpm jazz records or his custom bikes. That will happen when the time is right. In the meantime, I carry on.

* * *
Life has to end, love doesn’t.
Mitch Albom, The five people you meet in Heaven.

In 2014 Judith Clarke launched a blog, “Dementia isn’t funny,” about her husband Peter’s years’ long struggle with dementia. She continued until his passing August 15, 2021. Now she’s back with a new blog, “…and carry on,” with hopes that those who have lost their loved ones might be encouraged to learn ways to continue to live fully…after dementia.

Yes, sadness is a given and overwhelming grief likely, Judy says, but finding ways to smile and laugh are essential. There will be sleepless nights, engulfing memories, worrisome forgetfulness, guilt, weight loss or weight gain, desperation, unexplainable pain and so much more.

From her husband, Judy learned to laugh, really laugh, at herself and at life. She used that gift often when she took on the caregiver role. The laughter continued after Peter moved to memory care where he kept his companions, staff, and residents entertained. Towards the end, laughter was often the only resource there was. She applies that tool to her life now.

* * *

Judy’s daughters, Carolynn and Leslie, became Peter’s when the couple married. Both daughters, with their husbands Bill and Martin, have played key roles in propping mom up through their dad’s dementia years. Without them, carrying on would have been difficult, if not impossible, then and now.