After actor Gene Wilder passed away in 2016 following a battle with Alzheimer's disease, his widow Karen penned an exclusive essay for ABC News, in which she detailed her experience with caring for the late actor and paid tribute to the caretakers who have endured the trails and tribulations of the disease.
"I never pictured myself marrying a movie star. I also never saw myself spending years of my life taking care of one," she wrote in the essay. "But I've done both. Love was the reason for the first. Alzheimer's disease, the second."
After being happily married for 20 years, Wilder described the moment she began to learn something was wrong with her husband, after he lashed out at their grandson.
"The first signs of trouble were small. Always the kindest, most tender man (if a fly landed on him, he waited for the fly to leave), suddenly I saw Gene lashing out at our grandson," she wrote. "His perception of objects and their distance from him became so faulty that on a bike ride together, he thought we were going to crash into some trees many feet away from us. Once, at a party with friends, when the subject of Young Frankenstein came up, he couldn't think of the name of the movie and had to act it out instead."
