Bitter Sunshine

The sun was shining in a clear blue sky. Smiling, laughing people in the streets filling a bright spring day in London. R, my much loved partner of over 30 years, just diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

Sitting in the quiet, calm and sympathetic atmosphere of Professor K's clinic at St Thomas's Hospital, listening to him gently hammering nails into our hopes and dreams. We could not ask for a more understanding and helpful counsellor. Clear advice and unhesitatingly honest explanations delivered in a measured voice. Like doors slamming.

Sitting there with my son and daughter on the other side of me. All of us struggling to hold back tears. I held R's hand as the minutes crawled by.

We had known there was a problem for quite a while. Over the past six months there had been a range of tests: memory and co-ordination evaluation tests, lumbar puncture, blood tests, MRI. We could see it coming. A family history, textbook symptoms, withering hope.

Then out into the bitter sunshine. Nothing has changed. Nobody is different. Everything has changed. We have been changed forever.

Steady eyes streaming tears.

Thoughts grind mechanically through my head. Now we have Donepezil and a handful of leaflets. We will fight this. With everything we have. It is almost a relief to have it confirmed, a starting pistol for a ferocious race against the disease.

But here, now, there is an aching stillness, a vast emptiness filled with the streaks of tears and shafts of love.

The world is hollow.