What happens when the person you love is still here - but no longer themselves?
When dementia changes memory, identity and behaviour, caring can become far more than anyone ever imagined. It is not only forgetfulness or repetition. It can be fear, paranoia, wandering, agitation, aggression, sleepless nights, personality changes, confusion and sudden crises that leave families overwhelmed and alone. These behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) are often lived privately, hidden behind closed doors, and rarely spoken about honestly.
And when they arrive, someone else is often left carrying the invisible weight of it all. A wife who no longer sleeps properly. Grieving a partner still alive. Making impossible decisions on someone else's behalf. All over Australia, families are quietly unravelling while trying to appear fine to the outside world.
This moving collection of short stories gives voice to the carers. Inspired by real conversations with people supporting loved ones through dementia, particularly those experiencing BPSD, these fictionalised stories reveal the emotional world of carers whose lives have been reshaped by behaviours they never expected to navigate. Each story is rooted in lived experience, drawn from moments shared by carers during interviews and workshops. Names and identifying details have been changed, but the emotional truth remains.
Across these pages you will meet:
- a wife who has hidden her husband's escalating decline for years, until one day everything spills into the open
- a husband pleading for recognition from the woman who no longer knows him
- a partner facing early-onset dementia as mood, personality and future plans begin to fracture
- a carer who discovers that relief and grief can arrive in the same breath when residential care becomes unavoidable
- families navigating violence, wandering, locked wards, hospital limbo and impossible decisions
- those left behind, surprised by the grieving that continues long after death
Told with compassion, honesty and literary warmth, these stories explore the landscape rarely captured in medical language or public conversation: living grief, guilt, shame, loyalty, resentment, humour, devotion and the quiet courage required to keep going when love for someone transitions to care.
This is a book for:
- carers and families affected by dementia
- those living with the added complexity of BPSD
- readers who love deeply human, character-driven stories
- nurses, doctors, aged care workers and professionals seeking deeper empathy
- anyone interested in love, memory, ageing and what it means to care for another person when certainty disappears
Whether you are living this journey now, have walked it before, or simply want to better understand the hidden lives of others, this collection offers something precious: recognition.
Because behind every person fading, there is often someone holding on.
Thomson, Dana: - "Dana Thomson writes about how we hold what breaks us - grief, love, care and the spaces in between. Her work explores the inner lives of ordinary people navigating extraordinary change, with a particular interest in memory, identity, resilience and the quiet emotional labour that often goes unseen. This collection was inspired by conversations with dementia carers during a health project, where Dana listened to stories of devotion, exhaustion, humour and heartbreak that rarely make it into public conversation. She was moved by the courage of carers and the complexity of loving someone through decline, and wanted to honour those experiences through fiction. Professionally, Dana has spent many years working in human-centred design, storytelling and lived-experience engagement across tourism, hospitality, the arts, health and sustainability. Her work has involved helping people share difficult truths in ways that create empathy, insight and change.As a writer, she is drawn to the emotional thresholds of life: the moments when certainty disappears and people must find a new way to live, love or begin again. Her style has been described as compassionate, observant and deeply human. Dana lives in Australia and is currently working on further books exploring grief, personal transformation, travel and the many ways people rebuild after change. This is her first published collection."
