Reflection:- Who I am now.
Your message could be a reflection of my life since Alz' took over my Husband's life.
To look after someone, to be that person's 'carer', as many of us are, or were, is like living two live's in one brain. We have to choose what they eat, what they wear, where they go (or we go as a couple), We know their preferences and we try to keep as much normallity in their lives as possible. It's like being the proverbial duck. On the surface we try to appear calm, unruffled, in controll. Underneath we are paddling like mad, panicking over what once were trivial things. Anything just to 'keep up appearances'. We are afraid to let go, to cry, to shout, to let the mask slip. I am writing this with tears in my eyes. For you, for me, for everyone caught up in this treadmill. Then when they go into the nursing home system we are at the same time 'relieved', the pressures off, we can come and go as we please, we suddenly screech to a halt as we realise the places and faces we used to know, to see, to visit are just that, places WE USED TO GO ETC. After so many years together, we are on our own. The friends we had slip away, they are still a couple, a unit. The nursing home now 'take over'. They don't keep to the routine that we have so carefully written down for them to follow. We visit, only to find him/her, sitting in a chair oblivious to the surrounding residents in their chairs, and horror of horrors! he's wearing clothes that are not his own, not the ones I chose for hiim, not the ones I co-ordinated with his trousers etc. Oh yes, I feel anger, I complain to the office, I am affronted for him. Gradually the system takes over and we start accepting that he now eats what they give him/her, things that he would have once baulked at. The person we knew turns into part of their regime, their smooth running routine. Bless them, they do their best. And then? we suddenly think, "Who am I?" no longer a wife, a carer, part of a couple. We frantically search on line or bend the ears of other organizations who seem to know what we need to do, where we can get help and support, but the fact is, we are 'broken', we are now classed as two single people by the Government, (for the sake of the smooth running of their great machine of what allowances we are entitled to etc) and woe betide us if in our grief and our loss, or confusion, we give or offer the wrong information on their endless 'forms to fill in', or we forget to declare an increase in some meagre allowance. We seem to be in a sea of paperwork at a time when all we need is to recover our senses. And now what? I join an art group, regain the talents I never had time to do when I was a wife and mother. I go for walks, I buy stuff for the sake of it, I wander round the shops aimlessly, remembering the times I had to keep an eye on 'him' because he kept shoving things in his pockets, which I'd find later and wonder where they they came from. I renew my faith in a God who seemed to have forgotten or forsaken me, and I'm suddenly grateful that I'm still standing, I look back and see how far I've come, what obstacles I've surmounted through grit and determination, I am a person again and I feel like I've just crossed the Jordan, I shake the mud of the past off my feet and I finally stand on solid ground again. I have come far and the journey and terrain changes, I am me, I'm a strong, caring loving human being who has done everything I could humanly do in a bad, confusing, difficult situation. I can hold my head up and be proud of my achievements, every new ground broken. Every hard decision made, the sun comes out and I look up and say Thank you.
I am Tom's wife.. Yes..
After 25 years I am no longer his carer 24/7.
His day to day life doesn't involve me.
What he wears, what he eats is no longer anything to do with me.
He knows who I am and is so pleased to see me, his words, 'I am so grateful you came to see me'
Tom is safe, not happy but safe, which I could no longer guarantee, I could not provide a safe environment but it doesn't mean I am at ease with how things are now.
Like so many here on TP I have to find me again.
I have forgotten how it feels to do what I want when I want.
I have forgotten how to be me.
I could just go out tomorrow and do as I wish, but I don't wish, but I know I have to one day.
Me who am I?[/QUOTE]
