Still struggling

[AliceA]

I have been thinking about triggers. We cannot do much about the unexpected, but what coping strategies have people found helpful on known ones.

My husband died on our great granddaughters birthday.
For three birthdays running there has been something, she was diagnosed with cancer, next one still on aggressive chemo and very ill, now this year. A beloved great grandfather.

I have put this on this thread rather on my own because it feels it is part of how we have to find a way to overlay sad memories with the positive ones.
I wonder if people have found that looking at photos and actively putting oneself back to the sights the smells and atmosphere of the happy event helps.
As Anna says there is no profit in Why Me the answer is always WHY NOT.
We can do all the right things and still random rules.

 

[AnnaKarsten]

I have been thinking about triggers. We cannot do much about the unexpected, but what coping strategies have people found helpful on known ones.

My husband died on our great granddaughters birthday.
For three birthdays running there has been something, she was diagnosed with cancer, next one still on aggressive chemo and very ill, now this year. A beloved great grandfather.

I have put this on this thread rather on my own because it feels it is part of how we have to find a way to overlay sad memories with the positive ones.
I wonder if people have found that looking at photos and actively putting oneself back to the sights the smells and atmosphere of the happy event helps.
As Anna says there is no profit in Why Me the answer is always WHY NOT.
We can do all the right things and still random rules.

I'm sorry to hear that Alice, it takes away the pleasure of enjoying a family occasion doesn't it and turns the day into something sad rather than joyful?

In terms of overlaying the sad memories with positive ones, I've tried looking at photos from happier times, of holidays we shared, things we did together. I always kept notes about our holidays, the parts we enjoyed most etc, but even reading those doesn't help.

I've stayed away from TP for the last few days because to a certain extent I regretted finally joining and saying what it was that was still a problem. In a way, it almost feels like, after four years, I should be "better" and yet I'm not quite. Most of the time no-one would guess that I'm still working my way through all this - I can laugh and joke and have a good time with friends. I'm lucky where I live, I have great neighbours and we manage some socialising even while social distancing (sitting in the garden with a glass of wine, two metres apart!) and I consider myself pretty fortunate. I try to practice gratitude, thinking that I could turn around the grief by not concentrating on what I have lost, but thinking about how lucky I was to have what I had. I think that has mainly worked, but now it is the memories of that last year that come back to bite me from time to time. How to overlay those, I do not yet know. Perhaps it is just a matter of more time. I thought from the moment I lost my husband that those months might be the hardest part of the grief to process, and it seems that is the case.

I'm trying to think about Canary's suggestion, to post in the "difficult feelings" section, so it is a little more private, but even then I don't really know where to start with it. I don't think there is anything that we went through in that last year that any posters here haven't in one combination or another - the hostility, incontinence, dependence, the sheer exhaustion, the sleep deprivation. I stayed away from TP for ages, thinking that dementia wasn't part of my life anymore and there was no point in reading threads as they were often just too upsetting. It seems that dementia hasn't quite finished with me yet.

All the best

Anna

 

[AliceA]

I'm sorry to hear that Alice, it takes away the pleasure of enjoying a family occasion doesn't it and turns the day into something sad rather than joyful?

In terms of overlaying the sad memories with positive ones, I've tried looking at photos from happier times, of holidays we shared, things we did together. I always kept notes about our holidays, the parts we enjoyed most etc, but even reading those doesn't help.

I've stayed away from TP for the last few days because to a certain extent I regretted finally joining and saying what it was that was still a problem. In a way, it almost feels like, after four years, I should be "better" and yet I'm not quite. Most of the time no-one would guess that I'm still working my way through all this - I can laugh and joke and have a good time with friends. I'm lucky where I live, I have great neighbours and we manage some socialising even while social distancing (sitting in the garden with a glass of wine, two metres apart!) and I consider myself pretty fortunate. I try to practice gratitude, thinking that I could turn around the grief by not concentrating on what I have lost, but thinking about how lucky I was to have what I had. I think that has mainly worked, but now it is the memories of that last year that come back to bite me from time to time. How to overlay those, I do not yet know. Perhaps it is just a matter of more time. I thought from the moment I lost my husband that those months might be the hardest part of the grief to process, and it seems that is the case.

I'm trying to think about Canary's suggestion, to post in the "difficult feelings" section, so it is a little more private, but even then I don't really know where to start with it. I don't think there is anything that we went through in that last year that any posters here haven't in one combination or another - the hostility, incontinence, dependence, the sheer exhaustion, the sleep deprivation. I stayed away from TP for ages, thinking that dementia wasn't part of my life anymore and there was no point in reading threads as they were often just too upsetting. It seems that dementia hasn't quite finished with me yet.

All the best

Anna

I will pm you. X

 

[Grahamstown]

Everything in this thread resonates with me. I stumbled across it by accident, maybe I was searching for something, and yes I am doing fine and no I am not. I have found something that is helping me through, experiencing live video cam drives in the African bush, and I think of him with me as we did so many times during his prime and it comforts me, a bit. The truth is that he has gone and will never come back and I still can’t believe it.