Tag Archives: moving on

A Year of Mourning

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It will be a year tomorrow, on June 26, that I held my husband in my arms for the last time as he took his final breath. It was a year of sorrow, tears, blessings and joy. Isn’t that what a life is? A mixture of feelings squashed together, wringing the worst and best out of us.

It was a long year, yet a short year with some days slowly marching through the minutes and seconds, and other days soaring fast from sunrise to sunset.

The last few years with my husband were difficult because of his dementia. Caring for him was hard. If you haven’t experienced it, it is hard to understand because there is so much you don’t see if you’re not a 24/7 person in the caregiving realm. You miss seeing the sweetness that can turn in a minute to anger, always surprising you, keeping you on edge or as the saying goes, pins and needles. Sleep is a rarity. Nighttime is difficult because of sundowning. Yet, you plod on because of love, feeling it is your responsibility to take care of someone you’ve loved and lived with for fifty or more years.

This past year my emotions have been all over the place. Living alone for the first time I faced fears that I felt were silly. But because my anxiety had been out of control while caring for my husband, it didn’t vanish overnight, it just shifted to other things. My body felt like lightning bolts were hitting me while shopping in the grocery store, or being in a large public building, or going downstairs for coffee. I wanted to hide away. I had to schedule work in my home for as small a thing as washing dishes or vacuuming. I would say to myself, “At ten I will wash dishes.” Then I would rest for hours so I could get up for my scheduled load of clothes in the wash machine at two. Small steps as these, gave me so much anxiety, I would be sick. I imagined death in the shower from a fall and no one to call for help. My mind was all over. Driving a distance made me shake, and making a commitment for an engagement made my heart pound and my body weak. I could go on, but I beat myself up on not being strong enough to get over those feelings.

I couldn’t cry anymore. I cried for years while he was sick, large tears, loud sobs and my friends and families’ shoulders were soggy every time they saw me. Some of them understood and other’s thought I was just looking for sympathy and feeling poor me. I maybe was, but not intentionally, and though I knew this, and a few people and family were avoiding me, I still couldn’t stop. I too was sick in heart and mind. I was the lowest of the low the last few years, but I had to plod on, knowing how weak my reserves were. I couldn’t be there for anyone else, not even my children. I was emotionally drained. Not being able to cry on the outside after his death stressed me out and made me feel guilty. I felt I should be crying more now than then, because he was gone.

I am healing. I no longer am afraid to take a shower. I am not afraid to be alone. I had help in that department. My beautiful cousins understood my fear and gifted me an Apple watch to wear so should I fall and need help; it would detect it. That watch became a lifeline the first few months and now too. Friends would call often and check on me. A couple friends got me out on small shopping trips at intervals and encouraged me as I shook walking through the store. A new church welcomed me in and befriended me. My family, kids and grandkids, took time for me. My daughter would pop in or take me out for coffee or a day away, and my grandchildren took day trips with me and made me laugh. My neighbors where I live made sure I was never lonely. A Pastor friend and his wife from many years ago, called sometime twice a week to just chat. There are many others I did not mention, such as my online friends who kept me going with messages and phone calls. It truly takes a village to raise a senior citizen in mourning.

My doctor said I was tired and needed rest. He felt I had PTSD from taking care of someone with dementia. I prayed, meditated, listened to music and became stronger. But I beat myself up continually in wondering if I did enough for my husband’s care. Did I fight for his health enough or could I have been more precise and demanding with the doctors? Should I have taken him off hospice to get him surgery for his back, so he didn’t have to be on so many drugs for pain? Did I spend enough time with him in memory care? Should I have fought harder when I thought the care was not what it should have been? Maybe if I had stayed with him overnights, he wouldn’t have had all the falls and had the pain associated with it. Did I let him die when I should have fought for him to live? No matter what anyone said to me those silent fears were there. I still struggle with them now a year later.

They say God puts people in our lives when we need them the most, and this past month two people entered my life. Two different situations that gave me perspective and helped me feel someone understood my weird fears.

The first is a woman who lost her husband last June too. She shared with me her attempt at taking care of someone with dementia and then living alone for the first time in her life. She couldn’t go to the store without panic attacks. She was afraid of taking a shower that she would fall. Driving distance made her shaky. She too scheduled her household chores. And she felt guilt at not being sure she had done enough. Her feelings mimicked my feelings and my insecurities. I began to feel I was normal.

Another person entered my life as a friend. They too are alone for the first time in fifty-three years. It’s a different scenario I won’t get into, but they shared with me the fear of being alone for the first time too. This friend was driving out on the road in the country, and they began a panic attack because their mind asked themself, who do they call in case the car breaks down? They weren’t prone to panic attacks until now. Eventually they realized they have many friends they can call, but they couldn’t call their spouse. This was a male person and they again helped me see life changes and anxiety spans the sexes.

I’m sharing this on the anniversary of my husband’s death so others know that the feelings they may have after the death of a spouse are their feelings, but other’s share the insecurities that to the world who have not experienced this, seem silly. Each person’s grief is different.

The good memories are back. I look at pictures, have dreams almost every night about my husband and cherish what we had. The good, the bad and the in-between. He was the love of my life. It doesn’t matter what the world saw. Marriage is joyous, difficult, loving, scary and there is no normal. Marriage is compromise and forgiveness. People need to choose on their own what they can live with and when they need to let go to live.

This year I’ve lost my sense of humor in my writing, when I can actually bring myself to write. I need to find that again. I’m learning new things such as wood burning with a laser, watercolor painting, spoon carving. I recently took a class in vibrational sound. Zip lining is on my list though I don’t know if I will complete that one. I learned I’m an introvert pretending to be an extrovert. I would be lazy in my room alone if my friends and family weren’t always pulling me out into an enticing activity. This year has been extremely busy to keep me from wallowing in grief. Now I am feeling the need for a little solitude to take care of me. My friend that I mentioned earlier is doing the same thing. She echoed my thoughts. Taking care of ourselves is one of the hardest tasks, because we were so used to taking care of our spouse. It feels decadent to spend time on us.

I have no advice for getting through losing a spouse. I’m still figuring it out. What I do know is that I have to figure me out, taking the time to find out who I want to be when I grow up, because death and losing the one you love changes you, no matter what the relationship was. Most of my adult life I was part of a couple. I am learning what it is to be me, alone for the first time, finding my path and journey for hopefully, many years to come. And cherishing the life I had.

“What is lovely never dies, but passes into another loveliness, star-dust or sea-foam, flower, or winged air.” — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Bouncing Back

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Writing has always come easy to me. It’s been a way to get my feelings out
and move on. Lately I have been frozen, not able to articulate much of
anything.

If you’ve followed my journey and the trials of living with someone with
memory loss, then you’ve known the struggles. It was probably obvious to
everyone but me I wasn’t handling it well. I was plowing through. Reacting,
reacting, reacting.

After my husband went into memory care in late November, it was followed by
both of us getting Covid, and for ten days we were both sequestered in our
separate apartments. It gave me some respite, but it wasn’t enough. I thought I
was fine, but I was pretending.

In the middle of January, I had to move out of the senior living community
where my husband was in the memory care section. It meant more packing. It felt
like all I had done during the past eight months was pack. The move went smoothly,
and I now live in a small, peaceful, cute apartment with others my age. My body
did not react well to the peace or the change. As long as things were chaotic,
I could seem to hold it together, but my mind didn’t know what to do with the
peace.

I hadn’t been eating well in a long time. I wasn’t hungry and my throat,
chest and stomach tightened when I thought of eating. The one thing I had going
for me was that I slept soundly at night until about a week after I moved.

I woke up in the middle of the night with a tight chest, feeling like I
needed to burp but couldn’t, and experiencing wanting to jump out of my skin.
Crying all the time was easy. I finally realized I needed help. I couldn’t go
on pretending I was alright, though I was probably the only one that thought
that. My daughter took me to the ER. No, I wasn’t having a heart attack; I was
having a panic attack and severe acid reflux. Basically, I was having a
meltdown.

For the past twenty years, I had been on anxiety medication and medication
for my stomach, but those medications were stopped in October. I foolishly
thought I could do without it during the most stressful period of my life.

Because of my up and down anxiety about our situation, I alienated some of
my family. They couldn’t deal with our drama and if you know me, in good times
I am a dramatic person, so multiply that when I am depressed and anxious.
Knowing this only added to my anxiety and depression. And yet, though I knew
those facts, I didn’t seek help. There was no time in the drama of my life to
do that for me.

The silence of being in a new place after my diagnosis in the ER was a
blessing. My doctor said I was exhausted. I needed rest. Some days I would just
sit on my bed, close my eyes, listen to the silence and breathe. It was all I
could do. The thought of making myself food or paying a bill, doing any cleaning,
and even going downstairs to get the mail was too much. I felt frozen.

After the first week on medication, I was slightly better, although the meds
were messing with my stomach, so I decided I needed to try to do something. My
anxiety and stomach were still yelling at me. I would tell myself: “At 1:00 I’m
going to clean the bathroom.” I’d clean the bathroom and go right back to my
bed to breathe. At 2:00 I’d complete another small task. Surprisingly, I got
quite a bit done this way. Eventually I would have shorter intervals.

Little by little and another change of medication so my stomach wasn’t so
wonky, I am improving. I can go down to coffee, visit my husband and even make
it to Menards with a friend to find curtains for my window without shaking or
feeling I want to run and hide. I’m taking it slow.

For some reason we think we can do it all. Maybe it’s the media telling us
we can do it all. Maybe it’s our stubbornness that we don’t admit we need help
to navigate the hard times in life. It could be we listen to the voices that
have never walked in our shoes and don’t understand, making that known with
their words, and we hear those voices the loudest. It could also be we were
taught to show any weakness is shameful. Growing up in the 50s many times
parents would warn us when we were crying: “You want something to cry about?
I’ll give you something to cry about.” Tears were not accepted, especially for
men.

As a result, many of us oldsters hide what is happening. Wisdom comes with
age and experiences. I absolutely was not the most understanding daughter with
my mom when my dad died. I was 20, newly married with a baby on the way and so
I didn’t understand what a loss it was to her. I was too mired in me. When she
got dementia, at first, I ignored it. I didn’t know how to deal with it.
Because of this I understand the younger generation not understanding our aging
process.

Healing from mental health and physical problems is a journey. Each person’s
timeline is different and whatever they are feeling is real to them and
shouldn’t be compared to our own journey. We need to not judge mental health
issues and embrace supporting those we know whether we understand or not. When
you are in the midst of angst it’s hard to find your way to the resources
available and then navigate the muddy road of the process of organizations.
That’s where the support of friends and family comes in, finding the resources
and gently pointing us to better health while listening and being patient.

I again can laugh and see light in the future. Prayer and family and
friends, along with the medical community, are walking the steps with me. They
are proof angels still exist. I am sharing so those who feel hopeless know life
can be good again. I’m getting there. Find your angels. They are there if you
share your struggle. And you might find them where you least expect it. I did.