‘I wasn’t allowed to see my wife for a year’
Fiona Gibson hears how Alzheimer’s Society provided a lifeline in Tony Ward’s time of need
When Tony Ward’s beloved wife, Sheila, moved into a care home in May 2019 he felt grateful that he could visit her every day. They would often go on outings, usually to a favourite park to feed the swans, coots and a flock of doves that sat waiting in a tree. Then lockdown happened and those visits stopped.
“I missed Sheila dreadfully,” says Tony, a 77-year-old retired teacher and lecturer, “but seeing each other face to face had helped to keep that connection between us. We had been together for over 50 years. With lockdown the loneliness was terrible. As Sheila no longer talked, we couldn’t chat on the phone, and we didn’t get on with video calls either as they confused her. Sometimes I’d sit and have a good cry.”
To try to keep the bond the couple had formed over the course of their 55-year marriage, Tony started to compile beautiful weekly newsletters for Sheila, 79, which would include family news and document their ever-changing, much-loved garden.
“Rust-red smoke bush, white clematis Montana and yellow Euryops with a sole red tulip in front. Can you spot it?” reads the caption to one of his many photographs, illustrating such letters. “Hope you enjoyed the garden tour, more to come as the seasons change. All my love, Tony xxx.”
Knowing a carer would sit with Sheila and read the newsletters to her was a great comfort to him.
Meanwhile, as what he terms “a sometime poet and author”, Tony also channelled his creativity into poetry, winning a National Memory Day competition sponsored by Alzheimer’s Society. During
‘We couldn’t chat on the phone, and video calls confused her. I’d sit and have a good cry’
those long, dark days of lockdown, he went on to contribute several poemcentred articles to the society’s blog. “It gave me a positive focus,” he explains, “and from the responses it buoyed me up to know that I was being of help to others in my position.” Having met at Kesteven teacher training college near Grantham in 1963, Tony and Sheila had raised a son and daughter, enjoyed the arrival of four grandchildren and settled happily in Eastbourne, where they had relished shared passions of walking, gardening and golf. Tony had been aware of his wife’s gradually worsening memory for some 17 years before her diagnosis of Alzheimer’s in 2017. With an “avalanche of support” he had cared for her at home until her behaviour had deteriorated to the point where she was placed in the care of a secure psychiatric unit of a local community hospital.
“It was a very bad time,” Tony says. “When I visited, I was ignored or Sheila would shout at me to take her home. After a few months, she was able to come back home to me. But four months later, with little sleep and constant tension, my own mental and physical health was suffering badly and her consultant finally said: ‘Don’t be a martyr or else I’ll have you to treat as well’. The daycare centre Sheila had been attending helped me to find a wonderful care home for her, and she settled in straight away.
“I was relieved,” Tony continues, “but of course I missed her, particularly on waking up, doing things that we used to enjoy doing together, and at bedtime. The bed felt very lonely. But my mother had also had dementia and I knew the pathway it would take. So, in a way, I am prepared for the future. That has made me even more determined to make the most of the time we have left.”
To help to combat his loneliness, Tony adopted a Romanian rescue dog shortly after Sheila moved into the care home. “It helps so much to have another affectionate living being around the house,” he says. “Rino is a border collie/black Labrador cross, and so I sometimes joke that the good shepherd has sent me one of his sheepdogs to look after me.”
And, of course, as lockdown measures have eased, Tony was able to see his wife again. “We can now go to the park, where we sit on our favourite bench and the doves come and feed from our hands,” he says. “But the first time we saw each other after lockdown was through plastic in the home’s conservatory. We both put our hands up instinctively and touched each other through the screen.
“We loved going to concerts together so on that first visit I took in my laptop. We sat on opposite sides of the screen and listened to a short piece performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. I said, ‘We can’t go to the LPO but I’ve brought them to you’.”
Tony says that his experience with his mother has made him acutely aware that Sheila will not get better. “I do understand and accept that, and I think we might have around four years left. But times like that are so special and you have to treasure them,” he adds. “For that moment, as she smiled and clapped as the concert ended, it was like having the old Sheila back.”
Alzheimer’s Society is a charity that supports people living with dementia and their carers. There is a wealth of information on their website including a tool you can use to find support in your local area. Visit alzheimers.org.uk or call their Dementia Connect support line (open seven days a week) on 0333 150 3456.