Thanks for your replies.
Helen, relax a and chill.. what's that?!
I have forgotten! I think the last time I did that was at our daugher's wedding almost two years ago.
When Henry had had enough my grand-daughter helped me settle him in our room and I was resigned to sitting with him, and thankful that I had steered him through the day and he had been "good". But then the warning signs appeared and he truly had had enough. But I was persuaded to go down to the evening reception for a wee while. Henry also said he would be fine watching TV. After dithering and him getting irritated saying "Just go!", I went.
I felt guilty but must say I did have a wonderful time! I felt I was "me" for the first time in years.
But like Cinderella I stayed just a wee bit too long and when I left the reception I found him at the main entrance of the hotel in his slippers about to go out into the extensive grounds looking for me!
Then when I got him upstairs, settled in bed, and started packing our case for departure next day, he thought he was in hospital and I had come to take him home. Said I needn't have bothered that night, he could have waited until the morning. Although he said "I don't think much of the doctors here"... I wonder what that was about.
Pied, glad you wisely stayed at home instead of visiting your Mum, hard although that was for you. As Sylvia said, there is a need to pace yourself. I have not been doing that, and suffering the consequences.
Hope you have felt a bit better but probably not, but you would have felt more unwell and exhausted had you made yourself go. You need to rest and lots of it. Take care.
I don't too feel guilty (just a wee bit) about not visiting this weekend as Henry is unaware of what visiting is, and also lives only "in the moment". He wont be sitting waiting for me and disappointed when I do not appear.
I do feel guilty about not achieving all - well, some - of what I intended this weekend. I have been "doing" but not what I should have been doing. Instead I have been lethargic, very depressed and feeling lost and alone, and grieving. It is totally impossible to lay everything aside in my mind, and I just cannot come to terms with it.
I think over the last three months with Henry being so ill in the hospitals, and the terrible decline in dementia plus the physical decline I have been so wrapped up in worry and concern about him, his vulnerabilty, feeing protective, and much more. Somehow the reality of what life was before he fractured his hip became rather fudged around the edges. How h*****h life had become over the years, merely an existence, and the last year very bad, hanging on grimly by my fingertips.
It was finding Talking Point and all of you that really did save my sanity and stopped my fingertips from letting go.
I haven't really taken in that I have had a few months free, although filled with other things, of the daily shouting, swearing, cursing me, blaming me, telling me to F*** off umpteen times a day, and evening, the attempts at physical aggression, and all the rest of it. I've been totally focused on Henry and what he has been going through. But not that side of him. More his vulnerability, and I have had in my mind the Henry he was a long time ago.
This is very muddled, I know. Perhaps it is part of the struggling to try and accept the changes and him having to go into a care home, because added to how he was with dementia there is now the physical loss of abilities.
Those of you who have been through this know what I mean. So I'll shut up.
I hope Elaine does manage down next weekend although we wont have much time together, her arriving late Friday, away all Saturday at her conference, and leaving for home Sunday afternoon. But it will be good to have her here and to visit Henry together.
I cannot talk to her about the husband and wife aspect because she cannot see it from that perspective. She loves her Dad, I love my husband. But we both love him and want what is best for him.
I wish that could be him coming home. But I have thought and thought and thought it all through from every angle, I have read on TP of others experiences, and spent hours last night into the wee sma' hours reading Sylvia's thread prior to Dhiren going into care. I have thought of my abilities - or loss of them - and I truly do know that if Henry came home it would all fall apart within a very short time. What I want to do and what I can do are quite different and I have been thinking of the reality, the practicalities.
I suppose this feeling of failure and guilt just has to be battled with and hopefully somewhere ahead I will come out the other side. But at this moment in time I cannot see that far ahead.
Sorry for blurting all of this out, I didn't intend to do that. It is not self pity but a struggling to accept the realities and practicalities of our situation as it has now become. All mixed in with the emotional side of it. I guess it is something we each have to find our own way through. But thanks for listening - if you are still with me.
My gratitude, appreciation and thanks
Love
Loo xx