Dear Topsey Tiger.
Another day on and hopefully your mum has settled? Reading threads like this tells me two things.
1) There are many decent people out there we never meet. The Internet forums like this one is lifting a small part of the feeling of loneliness caring can induce. Kindness extended from strangers, who have some understanding of the emotional roller coaster of the caring role. Your mum is still with you but in a very true sense you are feeling grief. As you say you have lost the full time caring role that has shaped your life so profoundly in recent times. Additionally you sit in your mum’s home and grieve her absence, noticing the way for many years she was spiritually that home. The warm welcome, her voice, her sense of just being there. Truly I hope she settles in the care home. Allow yourself the time to grieve these losses, it is part of the healing process. To feel loss at their passing emphasises they were special, important, worth having in your own memory store.
2) Our memories are what make us individuals, they mark out our passage through the years. Dementia cruelly takes them away from the sufferer, which makes it all the harder for anyone caring for them. Until my mum started her Dementia road I had not really thought about the role of memory in personal identity. Please do not regard my next comment as flippant or lacking understanding of your pain. Someone else mentioned holding onto 1% of common sense. Well here is another thought. You will continue your journey through life. Looking back on these days will no doubt always be painful. Hard as it is to believe additional memories will be made in the future. Your ultimate return to a London home, hobbies and interests rekindled, new friends as yet unmet and perhaps old ones refound. You have done so much. The future is still out there and as you pass into it so memories are laid down. In these sad and dark moments please hold onto that thought. You in a future as yet unmapped. I hope it proves to be a good one, I am sure your mother would hope with all her heart for the same thing.
Hope the above helps. One day I no doubt will face similar dark moments. What you have honestly relayed has helped prepare me a little and for that I am grateful. One wonderful thing about this forum. Members do not meet, but they openly and honestly reach out to each other. Just knowing you are not alone is a powerful comfort to us all. I hope my words are some comfort to you. Best wishes for that future.
Another day on and hopefully your mum has settled? Reading threads like this tells me two things.
1) There are many decent people out there we never meet. The Internet forums like this one is lifting a small part of the feeling of loneliness caring can induce. Kindness extended from strangers, who have some understanding of the emotional roller coaster of the caring role. Your mum is still with you but in a very true sense you are feeling grief. As you say you have lost the full time caring role that has shaped your life so profoundly in recent times. Additionally you sit in your mum’s home and grieve her absence, noticing the way for many years she was spiritually that home. The warm welcome, her voice, her sense of just being there. Truly I hope she settles in the care home. Allow yourself the time to grieve these losses, it is part of the healing process. To feel loss at their passing emphasises they were special, important, worth having in your own memory store.
2) Our memories are what make us individuals, they mark out our passage through the years. Dementia cruelly takes them away from the sufferer, which makes it all the harder for anyone caring for them. Until my mum started her Dementia road I had not really thought about the role of memory in personal identity. Please do not regard my next comment as flippant or lacking understanding of your pain. Someone else mentioned holding onto 1% of common sense. Well here is another thought. You will continue your journey through life. Looking back on these days will no doubt always be painful. Hard as it is to believe additional memories will be made in the future. Your ultimate return to a London home, hobbies and interests rekindled, new friends as yet unmet and perhaps old ones refound. You have done so much. The future is still out there and as you pass into it so memories are laid down. In these sad and dark moments please hold onto that thought. You in a future as yet unmapped. I hope it proves to be a good one, I am sure your mother would hope with all her heart for the same thing.
Hope the above helps. One day I no doubt will face similar dark moments. What you have honestly relayed has helped prepare me a little and for that I am grateful. One wonderful thing about this forum. Members do not meet, but they openly and honestly reach out to each other. Just knowing you are not alone is a powerful comfort to us all. I hope my words are some comfort to you. Best wishes for that future.