Dear Langtry
Despite your weariness, your humour is still strong, keep it up.
You will be in bed as I write this (I am a night bird), hope you have a good rest, and maybe a short lie in this morning, and you can face another day.
Someone else will advise you on loneliness - after 61 years of sharing everything, it is probably going to be different from what you imagined all those years ago. Hopefully you can still share things though - the smell of flowers, a visit from the grandchildren, the cat, though things do change. Your wife is a lucky lady to have you to care for her.
My caring role was for my mother, I never had much of a relationship with her till my dad died and she developed Alzheimers. But she died in November, and I now realise what a considerable change took place in our relationship in that period. I also learnt some surprising things about my mum, how kind she was to other people in the home, how polite to the staff, always enjoying a little giggle. But other things "went" - her love of music and reading disappeared. We have to wait and see.
Of your 5 children you are lucky that 4 are supportive, even if one is physically distant. If your son is married he is probably more in tune with his wife's family, it happens like that even today. Women still seem to have the caring instinct in general, though there are lots of exception to that rule.
My husband and I are both only children, so we dealt first with his dad's heart condition, his mother's 10 years of being housebound and her later fatal stroke, my dad's stomach cancer, and finally my mum's Alzheimers. How I wish we had had siblings to help (though you will read on here that siblings aren't always a help, and sometimes a hindrance!). My own two daughters have been great, one is 30 miles away and visited mum quite often and offered me practical help, the other is 200 miles away but always available on the phone.
You ain't seen nothin' yet in terms of rabbitting!
Love
Margaret
Despite your weariness, your humour is still strong, keep it up.
You will be in bed as I write this (I am a night bird), hope you have a good rest, and maybe a short lie in this morning, and you can face another day.
Someone else will advise you on loneliness - after 61 years of sharing everything, it is probably going to be different from what you imagined all those years ago. Hopefully you can still share things though - the smell of flowers, a visit from the grandchildren, the cat, though things do change. Your wife is a lucky lady to have you to care for her.
My caring role was for my mother, I never had much of a relationship with her till my dad died and she developed Alzheimers. But she died in November, and I now realise what a considerable change took place in our relationship in that period. I also learnt some surprising things about my mum, how kind she was to other people in the home, how polite to the staff, always enjoying a little giggle. But other things "went" - her love of music and reading disappeared. We have to wait and see.
Of your 5 children you are lucky that 4 are supportive, even if one is physically distant. If your son is married he is probably more in tune with his wife's family, it happens like that even today. Women still seem to have the caring instinct in general, though there are lots of exception to that rule.
My husband and I are both only children, so we dealt first with his dad's heart condition, his mother's 10 years of being housebound and her later fatal stroke, my dad's stomach cancer, and finally my mum's Alzheimers. How I wish we had had siblings to help (though you will read on here that siblings aren't always a help, and sometimes a hindrance!). My own two daughters have been great, one is 30 miles away and visited mum quite often and offered me practical help, the other is 200 miles away but always available on the phone.
You ain't seen nothin' yet in terms of rabbitting!
Love
Margaret
