Hello everyone. Nothing extraordinary to say today but some feelings I’d like to unload. With me it’s a lack of control when I can’t even help Bridget with her care. All I can do is visit with flowers, fruit, a nice card with loving words and stand there looking at a woman I used to know now decimated by bloody dementia. I feel so helpless.
And grief catches me out at the most unexpected moment when I seem to have short periods of calm. Anything can do it; a picture, crockery, a plant; in fact anything we shared together. I move stuff and feel guilty. I change stuff and feel guilty. It’s almost like one day she’ll come home ( fairytale) and complain” why did you do that?”.
Losing Bridget to dementia and losing her being here with me has been the worse thing in my whole life. I used to think other periods in my life were bad but this cannot compare. Some have said to me that now she longer knows you as her husband, even as Peter, why do you still feel such love for her. Love doesn’t stop just like that. Real love is unconditional .
Hi Dutchman- how I feel your pain.
I am dreading my first Easter alone in this house surrounded by everything I shared with OH.
I am heading to the care home shortly to take clothes, pictures, photos etc to make him feel 'at home' but it feels like I am clearing out after someone has died.
Obviously I won't see him- I don't want to yet as I know he will think I am taking him home which I cannot do- no matter how much I think I could cope, in reality I can't.
How useless am I.
It is so distressing.
You're not useless
@Old Flopsy , never think that. You're being useful in a different way. I remember the shock of Margaret suddenly being transferred to the nursing home from hospital. I had to gather together photos and ornaments and what she calls her "trinkets" and take them to the home. Fortunately it was in the lull between lockdowns and my son came up to help. Without him I would have been hopeless. But later when I was back on my own I replaced all the things I had taken with other similar things, made sure there were photos to replace the ones from her bedroom, even found another tin full of "trinkets" to put back onto her dressing table - as a result I could feel she was still here and it gave me something to busy myself with. Of course it my not work for everyone, but it has helped me these last months.