Dementia Widow
Coming March 2026
Dementia Widow
Fay Martin
It took twelve years for the medical system to reluctantly agree with Fay that her husband was sliding into dementia. Even after he died, three years later, people questioned the diagnosis. This is a book about what happens behind that veil of invisibility.
It also exposes, with courage and candor, the poison that seeps in as a healthy reciprocal marriage becomes inexplicably hierarchical. Only when dementia is recognized as the villain does the relationship morph to offer the loving caregiving that enables a good final chapter.
When the final loss came, Fay felt relief, followed quickly by guilt that she wasn’t grieving ‘properly’, and resentment that the years of invisible grief were unrecognized. She brazenly reclaimed her life and wrote this book to retrace the years and find insights that Fay offers as a guide to others who are caregiving for a loved one with dementia, and those who support them. The tenets to good caregiving (and a good life) became crisp and clear during a trip to the Netherlands five years after her husband’s death and are woven throughout this book:
Nurture independence.
Find joy and purpose every day.
Live till you die.
Dementia Widow is set for publication March 2026. Click here to be the first to know when you can pre-order.
About Fay
Fay Martin, MSW, PhD, spent fifteen years as wife-turned-caregiver for her husband as dementia reshaped their lives. Dementia Widow invites readers into the hidden world of spousal caregiving - its love, loss, exhaustion, invisibility, and on-going quest to remain a person with identity and agency. Both deeply personal and broadly relevant, her story offers comfort to caregivers and insight for those who serve them.
Fay has written about people all her life. Mostly about people in difficult circumstances, because she spent decades as a social worker toiling in the underbelly of our world. She brings the energy of a git- ‘er-done organizer and activist. And a sprightly, slightly irreverent and oddly humorous attitude to an in-depth examination of what makes people do what they do in the circumstances in which they find themselves.
Martin’s writing spans her life as a farm kid in the West, community organizing in outport Newfoundland in the 1960s, working with those organizing other marginalized groups in the early 1970s, professional social work in various settings through to the late 1980s, a mid-life PhD on transitions to adulthood from child welfare, and a post-retirement life impacting homelessness, particularly the rural and remote variation.
Martin’s MFA project (University of King’s College spring 2023) is provisionally entitled What Doesn’t Break You: a memoir about pre-death grieving, spousal caregiving, and surviving dementia.
She lives in Haliburton County with two slightly bent cats and a circle of friends who keep her honest, occasionally troublesome, and frequently useful.
