Hi all,
I had just finished typing the title, when I realised I'd gone straight to the "Supporting people with dementia" section, instead of the "After dementia" section. Old habits, and all that...
But here I am.
I wanted to tell you about my time yesterday, spent with mum and dad at their graveside. It was much-needed trip, and one I've been planning to do a few times but been stopped by illness or family commitments. It's the 2nd time I've been there since mum died on October 30th last year, but the first time on my own.
It's an hour and 20 minutes drive there, and I spent so many years doing that trip every Sunday...I took a well-earned break for a while. However, my blueness was very much down to not being able to talk to them anymore. As more time has passed, it seems so screamingly obvious that I haven't seen their faces or heard their voices for such a long time. The more days that go by, are more days since they were in my life. Dying exactly 2 years apart...now is the time I have the space to think. Now they have both gone and there is nobody left to worry about, to speak for or to be with. I have my own little family, of course, and they need me, but not in the way my mum and dad did. No one will ever need me like that.
I can't explain the slightly warped way I was looking forward to it. I got dressed in a red top (mum's favourite colour), and one that I wore to the NH many times to brighten up mum's day. I wore mum's wedding ring and off I went. I stopped, as I always did, for a coffee from the Wild Bean Cafe and turned the radio to the station I always listened to on my Sunday visit to mum.
It felt wonderfully familiar and...right. For most of the journey I felt this, until I got to the road where the NH is. Then it struck me. I'm not actually visiting anyone. Thump. My heart hit the floor and an anxious knot started forming.
But I made it to the pretty, blossom-filled cemetery, and walked carefully over all the new graves until I came to mum and dad's. The soil was still making a very neat rectangle shape of a newly laid grave. I didn't like that. As I said to mum and dad, when I saw it..." I don't know if I want it like that, so that I remember it's only recently I lost them, or whether I want it covered, so that it's not a reminder of how recently I lost them.". So I sat and cried, used my tears to clean their little brass plaque and said I was going to the local garden centre to get grass seeds. I said "...see you in a minute...." and off I went.
I bought grass seeds and a wind-chime.
Back I went, and I did what the instructions said, all the while talking away to my parents and crying. Now it's a neat turquoise rectangle! The wind-chime makes a beautiful, gentle noise and I told them it would help them sleep.
I talked so much to them. Told them everything I was feeling. Said I hoped they could see me, were proud, could watch the children grow up, and that their early departure was for a far better place then this. Then, at least, I could make sense of why they suffered so much. I spent a long time there, and felt that they were listening.
It was surreal, beautiful, sad and painful. It was cathartic and necessary.
Dad's name 30/10/2009
Mum's name 30/10/2011
My sister and I plan to get a headstone in a few weeks.
I had just finished typing the title, when I realised I'd gone straight to the "Supporting people with dementia" section, instead of the "After dementia" section. Old habits, and all that...
But here I am.
I wanted to tell you about my time yesterday, spent with mum and dad at their graveside. It was much-needed trip, and one I've been planning to do a few times but been stopped by illness or family commitments. It's the 2nd time I've been there since mum died on October 30th last year, but the first time on my own.
It's an hour and 20 minutes drive there, and I spent so many years doing that trip every Sunday...I took a well-earned break for a while. However, my blueness was very much down to not being able to talk to them anymore. As more time has passed, it seems so screamingly obvious that I haven't seen their faces or heard their voices for such a long time. The more days that go by, are more days since they were in my life. Dying exactly 2 years apart...now is the time I have the space to think. Now they have both gone and there is nobody left to worry about, to speak for or to be with. I have my own little family, of course, and they need me, but not in the way my mum and dad did. No one will ever need me like that.
I can't explain the slightly warped way I was looking forward to it. I got dressed in a red top (mum's favourite colour), and one that I wore to the NH many times to brighten up mum's day. I wore mum's wedding ring and off I went. I stopped, as I always did, for a coffee from the Wild Bean Cafe and turned the radio to the station I always listened to on my Sunday visit to mum.
It felt wonderfully familiar and...right. For most of the journey I felt this, until I got to the road where the NH is. Then it struck me. I'm not actually visiting anyone. Thump. My heart hit the floor and an anxious knot started forming.
But I made it to the pretty, blossom-filled cemetery, and walked carefully over all the new graves until I came to mum and dad's. The soil was still making a very neat rectangle shape of a newly laid grave. I didn't like that. As I said to mum and dad, when I saw it..." I don't know if I want it like that, so that I remember it's only recently I lost them, or whether I want it covered, so that it's not a reminder of how recently I lost them.". So I sat and cried, used my tears to clean their little brass plaque and said I was going to the local garden centre to get grass seeds. I said "...see you in a minute...." and off I went.
I bought grass seeds and a wind-chime.
Back I went, and I did what the instructions said, all the while talking away to my parents and crying. Now it's a neat turquoise rectangle! The wind-chime makes a beautiful, gentle noise and I told them it would help them sleep.
I talked so much to them. Told them everything I was feeling. Said I hoped they could see me, were proud, could watch the children grow up, and that their early departure was for a far better place then this. Then, at least, I could make sense of why they suffered so much. I spent a long time there, and felt that they were listening.
It was surreal, beautiful, sad and painful. It was cathartic and necessary.
Dad's name 30/10/2009
Mum's name 30/10/2011
My sister and I plan to get a headstone in a few weeks.
