If I ever come across as self-pitying in these accounts of my wife Norma's dementia, please be good enough to barrage me with emojis of upraised middle fingers. Some of you have seen me as more noble than I am or need to be. It's true that nearly all my waking hours are spent caring for Norma—and that ain't easy. But it's also true that I have enormous advantages most caregivers don't.

To begin with, I feel reasonably healthy and alert. I have no lingering aches and pains, I can walk at a brisk trot given the application of a cattle prod, and I have discovered that the Fountain of Youth is laced with vodka. Moreover, our three children and six grandchildren all live within a half-hour drive of our home and provide us love, relief and encouragement on a daily basis.

As to finances, Norma owns her house, we both draw Social Security and have great health insurance, I still have a job that I can do almost entirely from home, and we are buttressed by modest but reassuring savings. So my life is a catered picnic compared to those who are barely able to scrape by with a shit job or no job at all and who still must shoulder the burdens of a disintegrating spouse or parent. It is for them that I grieve most.

Before Norma fell victim to it, I had no familiarity with this particular illness, and it may be that what I describe here has little application to anyone else's situation. Even so, I'll keep reporting on our case in the hope that it yields readers some flecks of gold from this otherwise muddy stream.