This week is National Alzheimer's Week 

In honour of this and my father Lionel who cared for his beloved wife, my mother for so many years I write a book called Looking For Lionel

 ‘Looking for Lionel’ is a personal story. It is a story of how dementia crept into my family unannounced and left us struggling to hold on to a life that appeared to be slipping away from us like a balloon slipping out of a child’s hand.  It is a story of fear and courage, shame and pride, sorrow and joy. It is a story of paradox where the least capable person in our family was, for a time, calling all the shots. It is a story of how our lives changed in ways we could never have imagined.

We learned a whole new language because the old ways of relating that required memory, no longer worked.  And although, dementia is not curable, we discovered it is also not a fate worse than dearth. This is a story where, out of the rubble and confusion, the pain and loss, we found the mother we never had. 

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