Peter, I have learned not to torture myself with photos. If I don’t look, they don’t hurt me.
I have learned to live the life alone on my terms.
Some things in the house were so closely associated with my husband they simply had to go.
Don’t for one moment think that I’ve thrown all this stuff out though.
His steam engines live in a brick built shed bigger than the house I live in!!
It took me a long time to be comfortable in there again. We all feel that his presence is still there. It’s nearly 15 years since he died but when I go in “the shed” my memory still expects to see him in there cleaning or polishing something. My sons feel the same.
When you see another man touching Bridget, surely if she is OK with that, it’s better than being untouchable?
Peter
I’m one of the people who can’t look at photos of my husband in happy times. Sets me off. I did however have a pencil portrait commissioned of him from one of my favourite photos. I love it and say morning and goodnight to it. May sound crazy!
You are living in limbo, I always likened it to a long goodbye. However, I began to realise that he wouldn’t want me living in misery, so did my best to start to do things. Stuff that would make him proud, that am coping. Looking after your own health, mental and physical is keeping strong for Bridget.
I don’t about any of you but at the moment i’m feeling a distinct melancholy and lethargy in just being me. i woke up this morning almost ok, went for a walk and i’ve had a decent meal. So far so good. But i’ve a feeling that i’m wasting away with a life of very little purpose. If you factor in Covid as well and this forced isolation then its increasing everyone’s weariness. I’m encouraged to join a regular Zoom meeting tonight with our local church group but i just haven’t got the enthusiasm for it.
i’ve phoned the home and i’m told that Bridget is fine ( they mostly say that) and thank goodness she’s warm, fed and as content as she could be. So why am i not content also? Perhaps she’s fortunate in some respects that she knows nothing of any of this awfulness we’re going through. If we were together now normally at least we’d be geeing each other up, complaining together, bored together, normal together stuff.
So another day goes past with me moaning on the Forum. Sorry guys. I just say how i feel at the time as i find it helps to unload .
Peter
Don’t ever apologise for venting on the forum. Most of us have, and it’s allowed!! Lockdown isn’t helping, definitely. Whatever situation people are in. Even my very happy to lucky 11 year old Grandson had a bleak day on Monday, and couldn’t snap out of it that day.
With the latest Covid pronouncements, it seems I’m going to be updating my upstairs bathroom rather than swimming in Crete. No where near as much fun. Everything just seems so grey and flat and boring.
I’m doing something now which is really upsetting but it’s a bit like a drug that i can’t stop taking. I’m looking at photos of Bridget that I’ve taken of her over the years. They are all dated . I’ve put them all on my ipad and if i go through them I can pretend that she is near me again as normal, as we were before dementia took her away from me. I wish I hadn’t now but i thought it would be a good thing.
I see her face, the expressions that she made we were together, I remember everyone of the pictures and where we were. She is so normal in them, just enjoying a moment in time and for a little while i can have her back as she was. She’s with me again as a couple and i can feel that I’m not alone anymore for a little while. I can almost hear her talking to me.
Am i going mad? Is it too much to ask that God gives her back to me ? It’s got me crying again so why do I do these things? I thought it would give me some comfort but it hasn’t.
When i see her picture i realise how cruel it is that dementia can do this to a person. But, of course , there is no rhyme or reason why bad things happen to good people. I don’t have any answers and no real way of getting out of this hole.
Peter,
I suspect what you are going is fuelled by and part of the (premature) grieving process.
Under lockdown there isn’t much to distract you at the moment, even for a little while.
Have you found anything that gets you out of your head for awhile? Whether it be binging box sets or a DIY project or researching ancestry or whatever?
Peter
You are not going mad. You are grieving. A very difficult grief.
Excuse this bluntness, but even if you ask God, I doubt the miracle will happen that Bridget will return to you, as you want. Maybe if you ask for strength to help with coping, he may answer? I’m not particularly religious, but I do know where you are coming from.
I’ve woke up this morning sad and numb. I’m struck by the thought of how terribly alone we all are with what we’re going through.
I’ll qualify that…I don’t mean that we’re short on support because on the Forum we all try to help the best we can and for that I say a huge thank you to all my friends I’ve made in my dementia journey. And I have family and a few good friends. But in the moments of agony, regrets and just plain gut twisted grief I find myself on my own. How could it be otherwise.
I’ve decided that I need to concentrate on getting through each emotional episode in the most practical way possible. I went to see Bridget yesterday and as usual I’m a mess of all different feelings. How long should I stay just looking at her through the window, how can I get closer to her, am I doing enough, etc? So what I need is a way to soften those feelings and comfort myself. After all there’s no one in the car with me to put their arm round me.
It’s plain and natural grief I know but I can’t come to terms with it. And there’s a natural process of just getting through each day, a bit of this and and that to fill the day. But instead doing it on my own.
Bless you all, Peter
((Hugs)) Peter. What you have written is absolutely right. It’s a way of looking after yourself. After spending so many years as a couple, it’s really difficult to focus just on yourself. After all, marriage is absolutely the opposite.
We always had that “you and me against the world” feeling, between us we could tackle anything life threw at us. Then all of a sudden the other half of the team wasn’t there.
MY OH was a top mechanic, he could mend anything, and I had this irrational fear of the car breaking down, to the extent I really didn’t want to go out, although I had to. In the New Forest, where I live, the bus service is non existent.
Finally, I wondered how others managed. I remembered my husband’s closest friend, never married, lived alone, absolutely hopeless with anything practical, even I was better than him. He managed. So I decided if he could drive his car quite happily, so could I. In any case I was in Green Flag, and my eldest son is also a good mechanic.
Trying to pinpoint this sort of coping strategy really helps, whatever the problem is.
Do you have a hobby or interest you never had time for, or is there anything you’ve always fancied doing but your wife didn’t like?
Try to think of NEW things for you, it can be large or small ambitions.
I’d never been to a live concert, so that was on my wish list. (I went to see Katherine Jenkins. Very disappointing, but I did it.
I’d always wanted to go to the Med on holiday, but when my husband was alive summers were spent at lorry and steam engine events. I went to Crete, and loved it. It’s become my “special place” now.
I love sewing, but never managed to put an invisible zip in well. I went on a course, and can now do it well.
Even growing your own tomatoes if you’ve never done it before can be interesting, in fact anything garden related fills the time and gets you out in the fresh air, so you sleep better.
You know, this visiting business is a bit Catch 22. I go because I believe if I don’t I’m letting her down somehow and when I go I feel let down because it upsets me seeing her, my wife, away from me when in an ideal world we would be together .
So I get uneasy about going but I can’t not go!
Anyway, I found a little project. I’m stripping the old paint off of our kitchen table and bringing the wood back to its original. That’ll keep me out of mischief!
I love doing things like that, it’s so satisfying.
My son has the drills, but I have an armoury of sanders!
Two mouse sanders, a pad sander, and two larger ones. As we’ve converted the garage for me, I can only do it outside on the patio when the weather is good now. I have a pile of things to do when it gets warmer, then I varnish them.
Peter
I was in a slightly better position than you, as I could visit hubby covid free .Met several visitors. Made friends with a couple. We all felt the same, desperate to see our loved ones,but the dread was always there.
I’ve never sanded anything, but have a little project am going to try when the weather improves. A little child’s chair that am going to have a go with. Hopefully, make it decorative for display somewhere.
My table is coming on nicely. All old paint gone now the good bit with the varnish.
I went to see Bridget today. It’s only for moments as it’s through the window, they first need to find her and when they do she really only attentive for a minute or so till she off again walking.
So she’s content I’m told which is something I suppose. So I go back to the car after seeing someone who has forgotten all the life we had and me. What a waste.
I can’t make sense of it, I really can’t. And when I try it just ties me in knots. There’s a barrier there, not only physical but emotionally as well that I’ll never break through even when I’m allowed in eventually. She looks like Bridget my wife but she could well be a stranger and the longer it goes on the more distant we’ll be from each other.
And this is on my mind each day. The problem with retirement is that no one demands my time so there’s no diversion. We were going to have all this time together until dementia killed that.
Peter,
It is terribly sad that you and Bridget were denied your retirement together. However, please don’t say your life together was a waste. Those years spent together are not devalued because Bridget has dementia.
The table project sounds satisfying. You could post us some before and after pics.
Peter, be glad for the happy times you had.
I was widowed at the age of 54, so lots of my dreams of retirement went. Try not to dwell on negative things, you must find new positive thoughts. It takes practice.
Peter, I haven’t been on for a couple of weeks so have been catching up with your posts.
You mention children - are you sharing your feelings with them?
also, there is someone on another thread called Nigs and his wife has recently gone into a care home and he’s feeling low too. maybe the two of you could have a good old chat.
Peter
I had resentment feelings about my own retirement. Had one year, then hubby started his strokes and dementia. Wasn’t good for my mental health to hang on to the resentment. He couldn’t help what happened, any more than I could. So I kicked the resentment away, and thought of happy times. Not always, admittedly, but won’t allow bitterness in. Your life with Bridget hasn’t been a waste.
Yes, of course I’m happy that Bridge has a good home and that she’s well looked after. I had no choice when it happened back in 2019 and I was lucky that the available home turned out to be a good one.
I’m almost getting used to this being on my own now but that comes with its downside too. Because I’m only see her through the window 3 times a week at most for 5 minutes then I’m just someone who turns up now and again. Couple that with her dementia then there is no chance of any meaningful relationship so the bond has weakened considerably.
So I look at pictures of her and it’s almost like I’m looking at someone I used to know, a different life altogether. This is difficult to explain. It’s like when a loved one moves abroad for a long time with no end date ( say for work) and you keep in touch best you can, but life goes on and you get on with your life but the physical connection has gone. Now add on dementia and a complete forgetting of who you are and you only have your memories to both comfort and upset you, then it’s something like that.
My life was her and me, our lives were one another. And now she’s in a different world that I can’t visit. If I accept this situation and build a life of my own then I’m finally saying that I accept you are gone and I can’t do that.
Grief messes with your mind because it takes you out of normality and dumps you in world you never wanted