Old lovers

Until the Administration separates you: they were one of those few couples touched by fortune. They married when they were young and shared their lives. They were not happy or partridges. They lived stories of all colors, as it usually happens. They built bonds, complicity, common projects. Some dream or another was broken in their hands. They accumulated moments of glory and love that made them strong. They got used to sleeping feeling the other's breathing, perhaps their snoring, the smell of their skin.

They are Desiderio Hernández and Soledad Domínguez. They lived in Plasencia, both suffer from Alzheimer's. According to the Dependency regulations of Extremadura, they had to be in separate residences. The Administration was on the verge of achieving what the difficulties of life and coexistence could not achieve.

How does the loss of memories add to the loss of the person who is your home?

The image is bleak: a couple lost in their labyrinths of forgetfulness, far from each other, who is the great reference point of their world. Everything is shaking, becoming uncertain. I think of the song Els vells amants by Serrat, a Catalan adaptation of La chanson des vieux amants by Jacques Brel. It speaks of lovers who have lived joys and sorrows in a long life together.

The couple's son, José Hernández, collected ninety thousand signatures through a platform to ask the Regional Government of Extremadura to allow his parents to spend the last years of their lives together. What must someone feel when experiencing the forced separation of their parents? Helplessness, rage, pain? How does the loss of memories add up to the loss of the person who is your home?

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I think of Nicholas Sparks' novel The Notebook . It is the story of an old man who talks to his wife every day about their lives to help her through a painful process of Alzheimer's.

José Hernández has had his way. After a long struggle, he has managed to get his parents together, even if it is in a nursing home 120 kilometres from their home.

It's no joke: Desiderio and Soledad are very far from home. It's unbelievable that there isn't a place closer. The Administration doesn't make it easy for them.