One of the most well-known faces on British television, Suchet has written very warmly and movingly of his wife’s deterioration

It’s a very satisfying feeling to have left home with a list of intended books for holiday reading, and to have returned having completed it. This year, one of my holiday reads was John Suchet’s ‘My Bonnie’, a very moving account of Suchet’s experience of caring for his wife since she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

Even apart from the intrusion of dementia into their marriage, John Suchet’s story is not without colour. Both his first marriage and his first main appointment with ITN began and ended disastrously. As American correspondent with ITN he had landed a plum role, but the appointment was premature, and he came within an inch of losing his position as a journalist. The distraction of a transatlantic affair with American neighbour Bonnie probably had more to do with it than Suchet admits; but the acrimony of his divorce from his first wife is as much of a heartbreak as the advent of Alzheimer’s into his second marriage.

One of the most well-known faces on British television, Suchet has written very warmly and movingly of his wife’s deterioration. Looking back, there were signs that things were not right: little moments of forgetfulness and disorientation that indicated something sinister occurring. But the diagnosis itself was the watershed; in Suchet’s own words, it marked the beginning of a long road.

There are few families that have not been affected by dementia in one form or another. The gradual deterioration as well as the final retreat into an unknown, inaccessible world, brings its own misery. To use Suchet’s words, one is ‘ambushed by grief’ for the disappearance of the person who was once there. One of my parishioners once spoke about her husband’s Alzheimer’s which left her, as she put it, neither a wife nor a widow. There was a real process of grieving to be gone through, and a new, unexpected, and unwelcome set of circumstances to adapt to.

Suchet does not sentimentalise his experience, although one can read the heartbreak on every page. He is very candid on the need for help and support. In his case a private care assistant enabled him to nurse his wife at home until this resource too was exhausted, and full time care was required.

As a result of his experience, Suchet has been actively encouraging the development of Admiral Nurses, specialist nurses trained to tend to the needs of Alzheimer’s patients and their careers. Suchet says that his Admiral Nurse ‘saved my life’, providing emotional support for the relatives as well as physical and nursing support for the sufferer.

However, he also says that he was appalled to discover how few Admiral Nurses there are throughout the country, and as a result of his experiences, he has been promoting the development of training such specialists.

It was certainly one of the questions which kept recurring in my own mind after reading the book, and in the light of my own experience pastoring families with Alzheimer’s sufferers. We are used to reading of the work of Macmillan Nurses, for example, and the excellent specialist care they provide for cancer patients and their families; why is there not more specialist nursing care for families struggling with dementia? Does everything have to be determined by a postcode lottery?

Early in the book Suchet expresses his aversion to religion. The colourful language often employed in the book certainly expresses his inner frustrations that were a consequence of his wife’s illness. But his practical atheism is expressed in the rantings against God with which the book is peppered. All of which illustrates the atheist’s dilemma; if there is no God, why rant against him?

So what did I learn from reading John Suchet on his wife’s illness? First, that dementia is often disguised – in its early stages at least – by an incredible amount of lucidity. Who knows how many families there are who are struggling with the early stages of dementia in their loved ones, and finding it doubly difficult because to anyone on the outside looking in, things appear so normal. Only those living within the same daily routines as the patients can know the true effect and extent of the illness.

Second, that there is still a residual element of guilt and even of shame in disclosing dementia. The honesty of John Suchet’s book is refreshing; this was something intrusive and difficult to cope with. It was not easy to talk about at any stage. And overcoming the guilt of placing his wife in the full-time care of others was a major hurdle in dealing with the presence of Alzheimer’s in their home and family.

Third, that there is a massive learning process involved in caring for those who have dementia. The advice given in the nursing home regarding visiting his wife was ‘Parachute in; evaporate out’. In other words – slip into her world, and slip out again. That is not easy after a lifetime of cutting in and expecting attention. But how quickly our personal worlds can change, and we need to adapt to the worlds our loved ones come to inhabit.

And fourth, that there is a real grief involved in the loss of a person – even before death. The mind locks itself away into a routine that only itself knows. For those observing it from the outside, a separation akin to death has already occurred. Suchet’s way of coping, however difficult it may be to rationalise, was to tell himself that the person now inhabiting his wife’s body, was not the person who used to be there.

I don’t know whether it will make me a more compassionate pastor, but this is one book I’m glad I had on my reading list this year.

Iain D Campbell is a native of the Isle of Lewis in northwest Scotland where he is currently pastor of the Free Church of Scotland congregation in Point. He is also Adjunct Professor of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary and a frequent conference speaker. This article first appeared in his blog, Creideamh (pronounced ‘Kay-Jif”, Gaelic for ‘Faith’) and is used with his permission.