Maurice works as a photographer for a busy metropolitan newspaper and cares for his elderly father-in-law, who lives at home with him and his two teenage children. Maurice’s wife died of cancer three years ago.

Before his wife became sick, the family all managed very well. Both Maurice and his wife worked in well-paid jobs, the kids went to private schools and were doing well in their studies, preparing for a university education.

The couple easily managed to care for Maurice’s father-in-law, who, although in his early eighties, was leading a very independent, very normal life. He had friends, went out a lot, did volunteering work, had an independent income from superannuation benefits and was a good-humoured, gentle and very likeable man with a warm relationship with his grandchildren.

About four years ago Maurice’s wife had the heartbreaking news that she had inoperable uterine cancer.

This tragic event had a devastating impact on the family. Maurice needed to reduce his working hours to spend many months nursing his sick wife. The children, too, were very involved in nursing their mother, but both became very angry and almost abusive as her condition deteriorated. They didn’t seem to be able to come to terms with the terminal nature of the illness and spent more and more time away from the home as her condition worsened.

Around the same time, Maurice’s father-in-law suffered a major heart attack. However, he didn’t reveal his pain to the family for several days, choosing to stay in his room with the door shut.

Eventually Maurice found him collapsed on the floor. Hospital tests revealed he had indeed suffered a major heart attack and had a 90 percent blockage of his main heart arteries. He needed immediate heart by-pass surgery and was in theatre for eight hours.

Although he recovered, he seemed to have suffered some kind of brain damage from the surgery, which had made him very aggressive and agitated – traits he had never before exhibited in any shape or form.

Having him come back home into a family already dealing with life-threatening cancer was a major challenge. Maurice was able to access his father-in-law’s savings to pay for in-home nursing care.

As his wife neared the end of her time on earth, she had one last dying wish – that Maurice continue to look after her father until he died, and not see him placed in a nursing home.

“Of course I said yes and made that promise,” Maurice said. “It gave her some peace of mind and seemed such a small thing to offer at that time of her great pain and grief and seeing her life slip away.

“Of course now it is a much more difficult promise to keep and every day I wrestle with the question of what I should do.

“I feel I need to be spending what free time I have on my two boys – they are really troubled and angry and hurting and they have both fallen off the wagon as far as their studies go. I am grateful that they are still showing up at school some of the time but as for their results – well, they are pretty much at the bottom of the class when they both have the ability to do so much better.

“Neither will do homework or study and both are experimenting with drugs and have gotten into the wrong company.

“They don’t like being at home because grandpa yells at them. It’s nothing for him to take a swipe at them now and again. He breaks things, he drops things, he forgets things.

“He has trouble eating by himself and remembering to undertake his personal care routine. I have bought him a wheelchair but he refuses to use it, preferring to use the walking fame, but he falls over a lot in it.

“I dread the day when he actually breaks a bone, which I suppose is inevitable as he is so unsteady on his feet.

“The heart surgery seems to have caused the early onset of Alzheimer’s as his memory is completely shot. Sometimes he doesn’t even know who I am.

“He needs a lot of structure in his life and I employ a full-time carer seven days a week, which sounds like a lot of help, but actually it is not enough because when I get home from work, he still needs one-on-one care; in many ways he is like a small and helpless child.

“I work full-time and absolutely love my job. The work is creative and interesting and the pay is great. I don’t want to lose that job, so I haven’t discussed my situation with anyone at work.

“It is a very competitive high-pressured position and I doubt that they would be interested in carrying me in any way, shape or form.

“So at the moment I am relying on the paid help, paid for by my father-in-law. If we didn’t have access to that money, he would have to go into a nursing home.

“Even so, there are days when I find myself wishing he wasn’t around anymore and then I feel like this hideous beast. I remember my promise to my dying wife and I know that I have to stick it out until the bitter end, whenever that might be.

“The boys know that I love them and that I wish I could be there more for them, but juggling work pressures with caring for my father-in-law and taking care of the domestic jobs doesn’t leave me much time for them.

“Time for myself? Well, that just doesn’t exist.”