Something bad happened to me and my family in 2022. My wonderful wife was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s Dementia. It left me (and my two wonderful children) in tatters.

At the time of writing this introduction (mid 2026), my wife’s condition is much advanced. And I have aged by more than the passing 4 years. I’m approaching my mid-70’s and I intend to care for my wife at home until I am physically no longer able to.

Living with a partner with Dementia has a profound effect on every aspect of one’s own life. The Dementia not only takes away crucial capacities of the afflicted, but it can also suck dry the lifeblood of the carer.

This blog is about my struggle to re-establish some kind of personal harmony. The struggle has caused me to question almost every belief and understanding that I thought I had settled upon from a life of study. It has taught me to resist the urge to search for fast fixed answers, thereby allowing room for continuing inquiry.

Simone Weil wrote about a kind of love she called 'attention', which Iris Murdoch defined as ‘a just and loving gaze directed upon an individual reality.’

There is a sort of wisdom expressed in this idea of deep attention which I want to explore further through the many activities that I enjoy. So that’s the subject matter for this blog.

Ultimately, I want to convey a sense of hope that remains even in the darkest of times.

A few words about my use of AI.

I do not use AI to write or edit articles or produce images. I believe that the struggle of writing helps us be attentive to our thoughts. Writing with the aid of AI can only be, at best, a second-hand affair. I do use AI to research topics, create reading lists, find quotes and so on. It would be very difficult to avoid the use of AI in this way, so embedded has it become in search facilities through web browsers.