Alzheimer's: The Love and the Heartbreak

For nearly two years, Newsday reporter Denise M. Bonilla and photographer J. Conrad Williams Jr. followed six families in order to chronicle the agony of Alzheimer's disease and to provide an inside look at the role of the caregiver.
The families all have different circumstances and loved ones at different stages of the disease.
On many occasions, Bonilla and Williams arrived at the families' homes early in the morning, often leaving late at night, as they observed the hour-to-hour, day-to-day struggles of caring for someone with a disease so debilitating it robs its victims of any knowledge of a life once happily lived.
The stories Bonilla wrote and Williams photographed are as much love stories as they are stories of hardship and struggle.
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