I have tried to keep busy during lockdown, but have just seemed to sink into a lethargy. I keep wishing I had been more patient with mum. She was never aggressive or anything but loving, but
I got frustrated when she soiled the chair or some such thing. I pass by an ad for carers saying something along the lines of If you can remind Sohaib patiently when he asks again what his son is called, why not become a carer. I always felt I was too highly strung to be a good carer. I know I was really fortunate because she knew me up to the end , but I keep wishing I had been more patient with her. I know that a week before she passed away she was singing my praises to the social worker, and she took my hand and kissed it onher deathbed. I know all that but maybe it's due to having too much time on my own that I keep thinking " If only..."
Thanks. I think I needed someone else to say that before I believed it. By the way, I am her son., but dont worry. People always think because I cared for her that I was her daughter. I am an only son. I know that if I hadnt cared for her at home, she would have ended up in a home. I also know that altho she loved going into a home for respite, she was always glad to see me when I collected her. "I knew you'd come".If your Mum was anything like mine, she’d be beyond sad that her precious Daughter is beating herself up with guilt over the care you gave her. She’d say “thank you for everything you did for me” and “why on earth are you feeling guilty for being human“? That’s what my Mum says anyway.
Oops, I’m so sorry! I shouldn’t have assumed. My bad.?Thanks. I think I needed someone else to say that before I believed it. By the way, I am her son., but dont worry. People always think because I cared for her that I was her daughter. I am an only son. I know that if I hadnt cared for her at home, she would have ended up in a home. I also know that altho she loved going into a home for respite, she was always glad to see me when I collected her. "I knew you'd come".
I cannot help but think of people like you as trail blazers for those of us who follow behind, showing the way, giving confidence that we will somehow cope, that what we feel and think and do is normal and that others have trod the same path and survived. Thank youIt is four months since my husband died and three and a half months since the funeral, three months since the coronavirus lockdown. This period has suddenly reminded me of the old days when people went into mourning for a year, and I can understand why. Lockdown has enabled me to get my life into a liveable rhythm, untouched by social obligations without having to refuse them. As the restrictions ease and it is possible to visit again at a distance, i find that this brings back a time when he was alive although ill, and a wave of grief has swept over me as a semblance of a previous life pushes me back into that time. The first year of bereavement does push you into a ‘this time las year’ frame of mind or however many years you like, and it’s still touches a raw nerve. My heart goes out to all those grieving and suffering bereavement during this isolated time. For me, it has been a time of healing the wound of his death, and re-entering real contact as opposed to virtual, has opened the wound. It will heal over again but now I know that after this period of unreality, it will be opened from time to time.
One of the effects of lockdown has been to make me brood too much; like you, I keep thinking of the times I was impatient.Every day I pass an ad for care workers saying something along the lines of: If you can remind Sohaib sensitively of his son's name, why not consider a career in care? I remember how mum drove me mad saying the same thing again and again. " What time is it?" " Do I go out?" How she would open and close the fornt door again and again, or how she would once said: I love you so much but you hurt me. How I would get annoyed when she left her poo under the chair or on the floor and I would say You shouldnt do that! and she would say I want to be with Jesus, you dont love me.I don’t know why I dipped into TP again, perhaps it’s because I had a bad week when I had to gather all my strength to rescue myself once more from descent into a morass of misery over my lost love. I found so much echoing my own time of caring for my husband, the frustration, the guilt, the anxiety, the anger, the sheer ridiculousness of how I had to behave to solve the problems, the pain and grief at losing my partner while he was still alive and now the grief and mourning that he is gone. Sometimes when I am overcome with remorse for not being more patient and loving, I look back at my entries of a year ago and then I know I may have done alright. When I read some of the posts written by people now, expressing similar feelings to mine I feel comforted that I am not an exception but the rule in caring for a person with dementia. Take care of yourselves everyone because you matter, Sue x
Yes that’s so true and one keeps being reminded of happy memories. Perhaps that’s a way of ‘inoculating’ one to face those memories without the painful jolt to the heart.In some ways, grief is worse now because after the initial relief, I find myself thinking of her before the dementia.