Oh thank you. Our human hearts. How did they evolve like this with such fidelity. Such beautiful fidelity. It is one of our most human qualities, what it means to be human. Thank you so much.When dad was in his NH I visited every other day and had my mobile with me all the time...the instances when the NH popped onto the display as it rang always filled me with dread but I needed the NH to know they could contact me at any time if dad was having any serious problems...in a strange way it also gave me comfort for the many days if they didn't ring...if you see what I mean. The caring role is so intense lengthy and continuous that when through death it suddenly stops there is a huge void to be filled and it took me a few months to adjust and then oddly I started to miss even my dementia verbally aggressive dad but now over a year on my dementia memories include some lovely comical moments as well.
Oh my dear what a wonderful and inspiring post, thank you with all love, this is amazing and so full of hope. Thank you! Geraldine aka kindred.Kindred - how you feel will/is passing. I 'allowed' myself to be in a bit of a dark place for a while but if I had not come out of it naturally, I would have started to challenge myself to do things again - gently but firmly (tough love for myself perhaps). Our lives go on and it would be foolish and wasteful to subjugate ourselves to a life of misery (golly, long words this morning, where did they come from?). Without being frivolous and making light of the thread, yesterday I decided to liberate mum's ashes from the funeral directors. I parked in the supermarket car park and, foolishly, I went straight to the funeral directors and was a bit ignorant of how they would be presented - in a big, heavy cardboard tube with pictures of sunflowers on. Nothing subtle about it so, as it looked like rain and I did not want a papier mache mum all over the town, I went back to Lidl's (other supermarkets are available!) and strapped her into the passenger seat. I met some friends in the supermarket and they all came back to the car to say hello... Mum's obsession towards the end was telling me when she saw a field (we live in the country so this was several times a day) that they reminded her of when the Americans were posted here in the war and they were amazed at how small our fields were because theirs were so big. She didn't mention it on the way home yesterday (!) but I felt I had allowed her one last go at it. It took a while to steel myself to go and get her ashes but now I feel a bit more 'complete.'