My first contact with TPs - rather daunting, will I make sense ?
Other discussions I've dipped in to seem suggest nothing to lose, lots to gain
When MIL arrives to stay with us I dread the tension that starts immediately - we don't havbe a cut'n'dried diagnosis, but there's no doubt that her short-term memory function has vanished. Familiar echoes in other TP histories of knowing things are not right, witnessing progressive loss, and confronting denial, for many familiar motives I guess, and all those tread-carefully processes to do with advice, concern, change of control dynamics and GP relatively powerless, though one can't help wishing for so-called definition/diagnosis, as if it would make any practical difference to MIL's predicament or our feelings of great sadness and powerlessness. No chemical remediation currently - would it make any difference, in other words our priority feels like something else, I guess.
MIL has dominated her family's life for so long with her controlling certainty, never a grey area, everything black and white, and now, so ironically [and is tragically just an empty word ?], we find ourselves in a cloud of intense greyness and absence of definition
Specific words of encouragement would be so welcomed - from anyone's experience that this echoes- for the unfamiliar state of our needing to take responsibility in unaccustomed ways for an unpredictable looking future with MIL who, habitually knowing her mind and what is best about absolutely everything, now finds her capacity disintegrating; she sort of knows and is sometimes explicitly frustrated and upset, but fiercely unfamiliar with being helped, loved even, ever, with anything, turns some parts of my heart to stone in self-defence. It would take the keenest edge off my dread and near-certainty of failing to learn and apply sensitive, authentic, practical and altruistic responses in a set of dynamics which are intensely fraught to be reminded that others have been here before and found strategies to survive and strategies to love and provide and accept.
The angry voice is screaming at MIL : there might be more credit in the account to fall back on in 2005/6 if you hadn't squeezed it to dry death over the years [25 of your daughter's marriage with me, and the 20 year life of our children]
So this is an intense dilemma - I know I am not up to the demands that are going to be placed on us, and I know that is not a helpful place to start from, and I guess we will just endure through grace
End for now; if you have been, thank you for listening, and if there are replies or reactions, then I won't have been talking to myself after all.
So grateful for each thought of yours in support - yours for mutual, reciprocal correspondence
HUGH
Other discussions I've dipped in to seem suggest nothing to lose, lots to gain
When MIL arrives to stay with us I dread the tension that starts immediately - we don't havbe a cut'n'dried diagnosis, but there's no doubt that her short-term memory function has vanished. Familiar echoes in other TP histories of knowing things are not right, witnessing progressive loss, and confronting denial, for many familiar motives I guess, and all those tread-carefully processes to do with advice, concern, change of control dynamics and GP relatively powerless, though one can't help wishing for so-called definition/diagnosis, as if it would make any practical difference to MIL's predicament or our feelings of great sadness and powerlessness. No chemical remediation currently - would it make any difference, in other words our priority feels like something else, I guess.
MIL has dominated her family's life for so long with her controlling certainty, never a grey area, everything black and white, and now, so ironically [and is tragically just an empty word ?], we find ourselves in a cloud of intense greyness and absence of definition
Specific words of encouragement would be so welcomed - from anyone's experience that this echoes- for the unfamiliar state of our needing to take responsibility in unaccustomed ways for an unpredictable looking future with MIL who, habitually knowing her mind and what is best about absolutely everything, now finds her capacity disintegrating; she sort of knows and is sometimes explicitly frustrated and upset, but fiercely unfamiliar with being helped, loved even, ever, with anything, turns some parts of my heart to stone in self-defence. It would take the keenest edge off my dread and near-certainty of failing to learn and apply sensitive, authentic, practical and altruistic responses in a set of dynamics which are intensely fraught to be reminded that others have been here before and found strategies to survive and strategies to love and provide and accept.
The angry voice is screaming at MIL : there might be more credit in the account to fall back on in 2005/6 if you hadn't squeezed it to dry death over the years [25 of your daughter's marriage with me, and the 20 year life of our children]
So this is an intense dilemma - I know I am not up to the demands that are going to be placed on us, and I know that is not a helpful place to start from, and I guess we will just endure through grace
End for now; if you have been, thank you for listening, and if there are replies or reactions, then I won't have been talking to myself after all.
So grateful for each thought of yours in support - yours for mutual, reciprocal correspondence
HUGH