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by Blake Farmer
“Vicki Bartholomew started a support group for wives who are caring for a husband with Alzheimer’s disease because she needed that sort of group herself.
“They meet every month in a conference room at a new memory care facility in Nashville, Tenn., called Abe’s Garden, where Bartholomew’s husband was one of the first residents — a Vietnam veteran and prominent attorney in Nashville.
“‘My husband’s still living, and now I’m in an even more difficult situation — I’m married, but I’m a widow,’ she says.
“These women draw the shades and open up to each other in ways they can’t with their lifelong friends.”