The Liberty buyer who gave up her fashion career to care for her father with Alzheimer's

Looking after an ill loved one has both its challenges and rewards; much like any career, or indeed anything in life, really. Looking after a parent can be slightly more fraught – and looking after an intelligent yet fastidiously stubborn father with Alzheimer's, whom you've idolised since childhood, throws trials and tribulations your way, the likes of which you could never have predicted.

These range from the amusing to the heart-wrenchingly sad: trying to dissuade him from ordering Chinese takeaway meals for breakfast, or leaving items of technology in the freezer, or wearing items of his wife's clothing to the Post Office, or lashing out violently at the people who are trying to help him – trying to locate and communicate with people who are no longer of this world. 

After leaving university with a degree in Politics and Economics, I'd had no idea what to do. I’m sure I'm not alone there. Dad, a former civil engineer, gave me the age old advice, "do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life". But no one could actually shop for a living, I thought. Oh, they can? Fashion buying and merchandising is a career? Sign me up!

This was when everyone thought it would entail flipping through magazines, basically being Rachel from Friends. But I wouldn’t be able to work for Ralph Lauren – ridiculous! No, I went to work for Armani instead. 

Working in a buying office, people are well-dressed, groomed and intelligent. You get caught in your little stylish bubble, coming out with comments like, "So the new ruby tote handbag sold really well last week, and at £995 it is a really great price," and getting to do nice things such as comparing the merits of a trouser suit in worsted wool versus tricotine.

When Dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's at the age of 60, I was working in the buying office for Liberty – arguably the most beautiful shop in the world. But something just clicked in my head: I knew I had to go home to help Mum look after him. That part was swift, from resignation to small  town return was less than two weeks, but the time that followed was an eternity and the ramifications will linger forever more.

Once I had moved back to Wales and fully immersed myself in the new and decidedly unfashionable role of chief parent-carer I didn’t think too much about my old career in London. I occasionally checked in with the world of fashion, sometimes reading Vogue and once in a while fielding calls from head hunters wanting to know what I was up to now. Taking those calls were always amusingly quick. It was as if there was a rigid dichotomy between my past career and current life and the two worlds would never unite.

Here I was, administering medication, cleaning the house and taking him to care centres and doctors appointments, wearing comfortable clothing and no make-up. The previous month I had been negotiating exclusivity on new season collections and not paying my gas bill so that I could afford that new Chloe blouse. The extremes of both situations amuse and amaze me still. 

A close friend who had lost her father that same year, after nursing him through cancer, counselled me that caring full-time reduces you and your life to the most basic terms, and she was right. All the fancy attributes and accoutrements you once enjoyed essentially redundant and you focus on the bare bones of existence.

My days at home would focus around keeping him alive and as sane and calm as possible. That's it. Sounds small; actually quite big. But you find reward and solace in those little pleasures: walking in the park on a crisp day, watching someone laugh uncontrollably at a much-viewed episode of Only Fools and Horses, cups of tea and digestive biscuits, warm showers, a smile, a hug. 

Another thing I found I had to do as a carer was forget myself. There was very little room for me – and I don’t mean that to sound like a cry for pity. Quite the opposite. You come to a realisation that some things are just far bigger than you. I think we could all do with a little self-forgetting sometimes to be honest, in order to benefit another person or cause.

At some point the cared for become the carers and it isn’t a shame and it isn’t a tragedy and it isn’t a chore. It is an honour. To be able to return the gift of love that someone bestows upon you is a gift in itself.

As I sit here writing this piece and feel my unborn son squirm inside me that feeling rises again. When those moments of utter self-indulgence present themselves, we ought to grasp at them gratefully. But the yin to that yang has its own value in our lives, the bitter making the sweet even sweeter.

Ditto the tone of all my memories of that time. Next to the horrors of seeing my parents' health decline, are recollections of my brother and I finding inappropriate humour helped, in our awful situation. Not for a moment do I feel guilt for that, I don’t deserve to, I had enough misery to contend with. If I found myself able to sit and laugh at bizarre gameshows whilst my life crumbled around me, then that brief interlude was welcome.

I wrote all these memories down in a diary, not with dreams of publication, but as a private coping mechanism – it has taken a decade for me to get to a place where I don’t feel as awful as I once did. The guilt remains, the sadness still looms large and the tears are only a heartbeat away, especially when bizarre and unexpected memories come unbidden.

But I do feel that the containment of this phase of my life in a single hard-bound document, ‘out there’ for public consumption, is more than cathartic; it almost removes it from my ownership. My story is not unique, many people go through something similar at some point in their life and that's what has proved to be even more soothing, I was not alone, I am not alone. Neither are you, for that matter.

My Mad Dad:  The Diary of an Unravelling Mindby Robyn Hollingworth  is published by Trapeze (£16.99). To order your copy for £14.99 plus p&p call 0844 871 1514 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk