IAN’S STORY
I was sitting in Wilma’s summer house the other day, just listening to music, when, all of a sudden, the tears came – Ian Dall on wife Wilma
This week Ian Dall will do something he has been unable to for five months.
The retired engineer will finally be allowed to see his wife Wilma, say hello, and tell her he loves her.
Ian, 75, of Balmullo, Fife, is one of thousands of people kept apart from loved ones who were left isolated in care homes as Covid-19 struck.
He and Wilma have been inseparable over the course of their 55-year marriage.
Since the first week of March, though, Ian has faced the agony of knowing that while 76-year-old Wilma is alone in a care home a few miles away, he can’t be close to her. Wilma, who has
Alzheimer’s, is no longer able to meaningfully interact with her husband.
Until lockdown, he was able to comfort her, during visits to the care home in St Andrews.
Ian said: “Wilma has a living will and requested no intervention and she has had respiratory pneumonia a couple of times. The last time the doctor had prescribed medication to ease her way out. That was on my mind. Would I have to make the decision that there wouldn’t be any intervention?
“That caused a few sleepless nights. There’s only one thing worse than the state she’s in now and that’s not having her. She’s bed-bound. On visits all I could really do was hold her hand, stroke her face and try to comfort her.”
Ian admits that in his darker moments he feared he may never see Wilma again. He said: “I built a summer house for my wife some years ago, which we laughingly referred to as ‘Wilma’s Shed’.
“I was sitting out there the other day with some music on and all of a sudden the tears came.
“I was a manager in an engineering company which employed 900 people and I have always thought of myself as a fairly tough old cookie. But I am not as hard as I thought I was.”
Of this week’s reunion, Ian said: “I am worried
about having to wear a mask but she is used to seeing the staff like that so it might not be a problem.
“It will be joyous. It is a day I thought I might not see, I am getting emotional just thinking about it. It will just be lovely to see her.”
Football fan Ian and Wilma met when he travelled to Glasgow to watch Hearts beat Kilmarnock 1-0 in the 1962 League Cup final.
Wilma was Ian’s pal’s sister but he said it was “hate at first sight” as she was a “weekend beatnik” who worked in the Mitchell Library in the city and wasn’t impressed as Ian was “a fitter with grease under the fingernails”.
But they fell in love and wed in 1966. They have two sons, Stephen and Stuart.
Ian, a member of the National Dementia Carers Action Network, has backed calls for family carers to be viewed as equal partners in care.
He said: “Since day one, everything has been a fight. I have been there to do it but I know others with nobody to speak up for them.”