“This is a story worth telling. In those moments when it was most difficult to tell, I was convinced of it. I just wish it wasn’t ours.” –June Hutton

Standing as a stark illustration of the culture in which dementia and caregiving exist in Canada, Four Umbrellas: A Couple’s Journey Into Young-Onset Alzheimer’s is a book with insight for all of us. 

Several decades of dementia research haven’t brought prevention, cures, or even effective treatments any closer to us. But as people seek diagnoses earlier, we all benefit from books like this one in which people with the diagnosis can share their experiences. They can express their enduring joys and happy days, as well as their frustrations and fears. Listening to these voices is an important step in fighting the social stigma and isolation of people with dementia and those who care for them. 

Four Umbrellas is straightforward enough; it describes how Tony Wanless received, at last, a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s. June Hutton, his wife, becomes his care partner. Both Wanless and Hutton are writers based in British Columbia, and this book combines their voices, beginning as Wanless starts showing cognitive impairment. The narrative of Wanless’s illness, written mostly by Hutton, is interspersed with email exchanges between the two of them. 

The trajectory of Wanless’s dementia and its toll on Hutton are painful and exhausting. Wanless’s journalism focused on the financial beat, and he had handled the couple’s finances. By the time Hutton learned the extent of Wanless’s difficulties in handling routine administrative tasks, the couple was already in significant financial trouble. 

Canada has social supports, but they’re riddled with loopholes and unwritten rules. For example, the couple’s application for a disability tax credit to ease their financial strain was denied initially. At last, an accountant experienced with the system added the “magic” words “Alzheimer’s” and “dementia.” Only then could they get the kinds of relief to which they were entitled. 

Wanless’s voice in Four Umbrellas is especially accomplished at illuminating dementia in its early stages: an in-between, limbo-like world. His emails show dementia’s hallmarks: circuitous thinking, confusion, and repetition. He describes his disease as fogginess; meringue taking over his brain: “a nuclear blast zone, where everything that was once there is now dead.” Yet he remains a person with an illness, not someone to be pitied. 

Both his and Hutton’s shame, embarrassment, and pain about the symptoms and the diagnosis are palpable. 

We all have a near-inexhaustible capacity to fool ourselves. No one wants to acknowledge their own mental confusion. No one wants to see dementia in the face that is resting on the pillow next to theirs. It took great courage to write this book. 

Who should read it? At minimum, government officials, policymakers, healthcare providers, social service managers, and financial planners. 

Truthfully? We all should: statistics suggest that if we don’t already know someone with dementia, we will soon.

As Hutton concludes, “This book is our way of saying to all: Pay attention.” 

I hope we are.