CHERISHING THE MEMORIES

Natasha Young, 50, shares the heartbreaking reason why every second with her husband Gary counts

- ELAINE HAYWARD

Watching my husband Gary answer the phone, I saw the colour drain from his cheeks as he listened intently. Without saying a word, he handed the phone to me, and I could see a shimmer of tears in his eyes. I spoke into the phone, then heard the neurologist's voice. 'It's confirmed,' he said. 'Gary has Alzheimer's.

That's how we received the news of his life-changing diagnosis in February 2022. Gary was just 51, which meant it was classed as young-onset. We both just sat there silently sobbing on the sofa, neither of us knowing what to say. All I could think about was losing my soulmate, and him slowly forgetting who I am.

Gary and I had known each other our whole lives. We'd grown up on the same street and I knew who he was, but we didn't meet properly until I was 23 and working in a pub - where Gary, then 29, was the cheeky, charming doorman. The attraction between us was instant, and we became inseparable. Our son Nathan arrived in 2001, we got married in 2007 and later welcomed our daughters Isla, in 2011, and Amelia, in 2014.

Our house was full of laughter, and Gary was a devoted husband and dad. He was a picture of health too. By then a self-employed joiner, he went to the gym five days a week, never smoked and barely drank. He even had a six-pack.

Then, little by little, things started to change. Around the age of 47, Gary started forgetting small things or misplacing tools. 'I couldn't read my measuring tape today,' he said one evening. 'My brain just went blank.' We put it down to stress and being busy, but during lockdown in 2020 when we were home together all day, it became impossible to ignore.

One afternoon, I watched him standing in the garden, staring at a half-built summer house he'd been working on - a job he'd normally breeze through. 'I just can't make sense of it,' he muttered.

His GP said it sounded like anxiety or depression, and Gary was prescribed antidepressants, but nothing changed.