Mike and Kerri-Ann Farr had a love story for the ages: A childhood crush that turned into a 40-year marriage thanks to a chance reunion on a street corner.
They were the kind of couple everyone was in awe of, with four children and nary a fight after nearly four decades together.
Then one day Mike started to grow distant, and Kerri-Ann worried that her husband, her rock, had fallen for someone else.
But Kerri-Ann soon learned that the man she had adored since she was just 12 years old wasn’t seeing a stranger – he was turning into one.
At the age of 58, Mike was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s.
Kerri-Ann Farr had been happily married to her husband Mike for nearly forty years when he began to act distant. What she first thought could be an affair, turned out to be Alzheimer’s
Kerri-Ann had known Mike since she was 12, but the pair reconnected seven years later when she bumped into him on a Sydney street corner. They wed five months later
When she was just a girl living in Sydney, Kerri-Ann used to ring Mike’s number, say ‘I love you’ to the 14-year-old boy on the other line, and then immediately hanging up.
‘He was just cute, he was a cute, good-looking boy,’ Kerri-Ann told Daily Mail Australia.
‘He actually couldn’t stand me at that age,’ she continued with a laugh. ‘He would totally avoid me.’
‘We would sell bingo cards together at the church in the city and he would say “Stop ringing me”. He knew it was me and wanted nothing to do with me!’
It would be five years before Kerri-Ann, then 19, saw her childhood crush again.
‘I happened to see him at the corner crossing the road, and I stopped and said hello. While we were chatting, he said we should get together for old times’ sake,’ she recalled.
The pair went for short soup and fried rice at a nearby Chinese restaurant, and then went to watch A Clockwork Orange at a nearby cinema.
Kerri-Ann, now 59, said she still can’t put her finger on what made her and Mike, now 62, so compatible from the start. Although they were different, they complemented each other
Mike came from a big Catholic family and loved football, while Kerri-Ann was an only child and wasn’t religious. And still, they never fought
After the film they went to a pub, where they ended up naming two of their future children.
‘I said to my mom the next morning, “I met the man I’m going to marry'”, Kerri-Ann said. ‘We were engaged five weeks later, and married four months after that.’
Kerri-Ann, now 59, said she still can’t put her finger on what made her and Mike, now 62, so compatible from the start.
‘We were just really lucky,’ she said. ‘We were very different. He loved football and came from a big Catholic family, I didn’t know much about football, wasn’t any religion and am an only child. But we just complemented each other.’
‘I really can’t remember a time when we ever really fought, we just seemed to get through things.’
That included a few miscarriages as Kerri-Ann initially struggled to get pregnant.
‘I lost a few babies, and he was just my rock,’ she said. ‘We were really lucky.’
The couple went on to raise four children, now aged 30 to 38, and now have 10 grandchildren as well.
The couple supported each other as Kerri-Ann struggled to get pregnant and had a few miscarriages, eventually having four children
Kerri-Ann said Mike relished the role of being the family’s patriarch, known for his sense of humour and taking control of the barbecue at family gatherings
The happy couple went on to have three sons and a daughter, and now have 10 grandchildren
As their 40th wedding anniversary neared, Kerri-Ann and Mike began dreaming of getting their passports and making plans to finally travel overseas together.
But, about four years ago, Kerri-Ann noticed small changes in Mike and couldn’t help but think that something was amiss.
‘I felt that he withdrew a bit, he’d be a bit quieter than normal,’ she said. ‘When we were driving he would get cranky and that wasn’t like him, he was just such a sweet beautiful man and it was out of his character.’
‘He didn’t totally withdraw from me, but I felt that there was a little bit of our connection that wasn’t there anymore.’
That’s when Kerri-Ann began to fear that Mike was having an affair.
‘I said to another girlfriend, “I don’t know if he’s met someone else, he doesn’t seem connected to me”‘, she said.
But when Kerri-Ann asked Mike if everything was okay between them, he looked surprised by her concern and simply said ‘Of course’.
For decades Kerri-Ann was was happy for Mike to run the household, dealing with their taxes and doing the driving while her part-time wages paid for the family’s ‘nice things’
But their roles would soon drastically switch after Mike, an electrician for 40 years, made a fundamental error at work and his boss advised he see a doctor
Mike’s first signs of Alzheimer’s were not classic symptoms like forgetting his keys or getting lost. Instead he became withdrawn and cranky, a departure from his sweet nature
Yet the worrying signs only began to multiply. Mike was getting lost during his usual drives with Kerri-Ann, and fumbled through his speech at his daughter’s wedding.
‘We look at the video now, and it’s so obvious it’s ridiculous,’ she said. ‘But at the time it was excused. We thought, “Oh it’s his only daughter, he’s just nervous”‘.
After Kerri-Ann was diagnosed with leukemia in November 2015, Mike only seemed to get worse.
‘He would get very confused, would lose his train of thought and was very quiet in family gatherings,’ she recalled.
‘But we thought, “Maybe he’s just worried about me, maybe he was just concerned and didn’t want to say anything”‘.
Then one day Mike, who had been an electrician for 40 years, made a fundamental error at work. His boss sent him home and suggested he see a doctor.
Kerri-Ann had begun to research symptoms, and decided Mike either had Alzheimer’s or a brain tumour.
They saw a specialist who asked Mike to count backwards from 100. He couldn’t even get to 99.
‘I thought he was joking, he had been a whiz at maths’ Kerri-Ann said. ‘But he couldn’t get any further back. It’s something he still can’t do.’
Kerri-Ann (pictured with Mike and the couple’s three sons) began to fear that he was having an affair as she felt their connection disappearing
Mike, famous for his good sense of humour, then stumbled through his speech at his daughter’s wedding (pictured). Kerri-Ann couldn’t shake that something was wrong
Eighteen months after Mike began showing symptoms, they were told by the doctors that all of his test results were in line with Alzheimer’s.
‘We were relieved it wasn’t a brain tumour, but now I don’t know what would be best,’ Kerri-Ann said. ‘Maybe a brain tumour can be treated and cured.’
They went to see a specialist and, at the age of 58, Mike was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Keri-Ann became his carer
Suddenly Kerri-Ann was both battling cancer and becoming a full-time carer to her husband. It was a change that has left her feeling isolated.
‘It’s very lonely being a carer,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to burden your friends all the time on your down days, and you want to protect your children.’
‘I’m lucky with my kids, they’d step up as soon as I need them, but they’ve got their own families and I don’t want to burden them. This is my job, he’s my husband.’
And there was the struggle of people not understanding the extent of Mike’s condition. Some would tell Kerri-Ann, ‘Oh I forget my keys all the time, I must have Alzheimer’s’.
‘I wish it was as simple as that,’ she said. ‘I wish it was as simple as reminding someone where to put the keys.’
‘It’s the fact that they’re there, but they’re not there. It’s not about forgetting names and things – it’s forgetting to be yourself.’
Kerri-Ann said Mike is now happiest when with his younger grandchildren, who he doesn’t feel ‘judged or tested by’ when he stumbles on his words
Kerri-Ann (pictured with one of her grandchildren) is not only caring for Mike, but also battling leukemia, which she was diagnosed with in 2015
There are still glimmers of the old Mike, often in the mornings when he’s at his best.
‘Someone will say something or do something and he’ll just brighten up,’ Kerri-Ann said. ‘His eyes come alive and I see him in there.’
‘That’s why I won’t give up on him. Because I know he’s still in there.’
And he’s at his happiest when he’s with his two-year-old granddaughter, who Kerri-Ann said he ‘just clicks with’.
‘I think it’s because he doesn’t feel that he’s being judged or tested,’ she said. ‘She talks baby talk babble, and if he gets lost in his words while reading a story she doesn’t care.’
As lonely as Kerri-Ann often feels from the outside world, it is Mike that she misses the most.
‘I miss conversation, I miss that intimacy of conversation. I miss going on drives – we used to drive to Canberra for coffee and chat and laugh and sing,’ she said.
‘Now we just sit in the car and don’t say anything to each other because he just doesn’t have that capacity for conversation.’
‘That’s the hardest thing, watching that connection break. I live with a very nice man, but we don’t have that relationship anymore. I don’t have a husband anymore.’
As lonely as Kerri-Ann often feels from the outside world, it is Mike that she misses the most. ‘That’s the hardest thing,’ she said, ‘Watching that connection break’