I wondered if anyone else feels like their brain needs a good hoovering after a parent with dementia has died?
I've been struggling to cope long distance with my parents' situation for many years as their mental and physical health declined, and failed to get my dad to sell up and move nearer to me while they still could. So every visit filled me with woe as their huge garden and house got even more delapidated and chaotic, and there were always arguments with my dad refusing to acknowledge he wasn't coping, and I felt bad secretly cleaning their fridge etc and insisting on cooking and changing sheets as I couldn't bear staying in those conditions. So much guilt.
Then over the last 18 months within weeks of us moving house and the week before I started my new job, I've had to get my mum into care, get my dad hospitalised, get social services involved when he got home, pick up the pieces when he dismissed them, get him sectioned, then finally get him into respite care. Then came the trauma and injury of physically clearing out their house, finding tons of secrets and squalor, to sell it for six months solid, taking over all their finances and household bills, cancelling all their scam purchases. Then moving them both near me, then visiting them all the time, and finding a new place for dad, and then him dying three weeks ago. It's been a non-stop traumatic to do list that will only settle once my executor duties are complete, and then only if my mum stays stable. Sorry what a rant, don't mean to sound self-pitying!
Anyway, so the funeral and scattering of ashes is done, was emotional but also lovely. It's just over three weeks since he died. Everyone says it's closure, I can move on.
But my brain is constantly replaying all the really difficult scenes from recent years. Things which at the time I felt no child should ever have to see, or have to battle with to get help for a parent. I feel sad I will never see my dad again, but that's the expected part of grief, and it's minor compared to this processing of all the horror I've been a witness to. I just want to move on, try to pick up the pieces of my life that have been put on hold, and be able to forget a lot of the last two years.
Does anyone else feel this, does it pass? X
I've been struggling to cope long distance with my parents' situation for many years as their mental and physical health declined, and failed to get my dad to sell up and move nearer to me while they still could. So every visit filled me with woe as their huge garden and house got even more delapidated and chaotic, and there were always arguments with my dad refusing to acknowledge he wasn't coping, and I felt bad secretly cleaning their fridge etc and insisting on cooking and changing sheets as I couldn't bear staying in those conditions. So much guilt.
Then over the last 18 months within weeks of us moving house and the week before I started my new job, I've had to get my mum into care, get my dad hospitalised, get social services involved when he got home, pick up the pieces when he dismissed them, get him sectioned, then finally get him into respite care. Then came the trauma and injury of physically clearing out their house, finding tons of secrets and squalor, to sell it for six months solid, taking over all their finances and household bills, cancelling all their scam purchases. Then moving them both near me, then visiting them all the time, and finding a new place for dad, and then him dying three weeks ago. It's been a non-stop traumatic to do list that will only settle once my executor duties are complete, and then only if my mum stays stable. Sorry what a rant, don't mean to sound self-pitying!
Anyway, so the funeral and scattering of ashes is done, was emotional but also lovely. It's just over three weeks since he died. Everyone says it's closure, I can move on.
But my brain is constantly replaying all the really difficult scenes from recent years. Things which at the time I felt no child should ever have to see, or have to battle with to get help for a parent. I feel sad I will never see my dad again, but that's the expected part of grief, and it's minor compared to this processing of all the horror I've been a witness to. I just want to move on, try to pick up the pieces of my life that have been put on hold, and be able to forget a lot of the last two years.
Does anyone else feel this, does it pass? X