Categories
God's Love

How Long Does it Take

I thought as time went on I would lose the grief. Maybe I have lost some but what is harder is creating a new life alone. Each day in different ways I find what it is to live alone, to have no one to talk to, no one to know when I am gone or if something happens to me that I can’t come home.

In time I may find some single or widowed friends that can help. What I fear is that if any male pays attention to me I will fall hard and fast. I was taught growing up that you are nothing without a man. Since sixteen I have either been dating or married. I have had the love of many men and always attracted men. No I am at the invisible age. I am attractive, intelligent and financially secure but no man looks at me twice.

I feel in my heart that God wants me to take this time to learn to let him meet all of my needs. Instead of resting in his care I find myself trying to find a way to go back to a comfortable know way of life with a spouse. I am like the Israelites who wanted a king instead of being led by God.

Categories
Frontal Temporal Dementia

Grieving Advice

My assignment is to consider what grieving advice I could give to a friend. Let me tell you there is not one bit of advice I can offer. I feel a multitude of emotions all of them hard to identify. Sometimes sadness comes to the forefront, sometimes it is guilt, sometimes I am numb. Maybe in time I can work through enough to be a help to someone else.

Categories
Frontal Temporal Dementia

What Do I Miss

The exercise I have today is to say what I miss the most about my deceased husband. I miss the early years when we had fun and laughter together. We traveled as much as we could. He loved to go out and eat, to go to parties, to help out at the church, to play softball and coach Little League. He was always so proud of me. He was proud when I continued my education and no one was prouder then he was when I passed the CPA exam. He loved my mom and dad and said he would have married me as much for my family as for me. Until the day they died he was so good to my parents and never complained about the time we spent with them or the things we did for them. The dementia made the last years horrible but with him gone I am remembering the good times more than the bad.

Categories
One Love

Twice a Fool

I cut off his access in mid-December. All this time I thought he was thinking of me and wondering why he couldn’t reach me. Two months later I removed the block because I thought it was so rude of me to do that and it would hurt had he done the same to me.

I thought he might show up either at my husband’s memorial or at the grave site. Then I thought he might come by my house.

He made a big deal of going to a gathering I might have gone to and then he was with someone who asked for my phone and address so I thought it was him and he might call me or show up at my house.

This morning he sends a message that says he didn’t know my husband died and sorry and how am I?

He obviously has not tried to contact me for two months and then he asks if I’m OK. I am so angry and hurt and feel like such a fool!

Categories
One Love

One Love

So many people act like love is disposable…when people alter or circumstances alter the love ends. In my life there has been one love and no matter what he does or how he acts I still love him. He left me many years ago and then came back into my life. Even though I will love him all of my life I chose not to have him in my life. The pleasure is not worth the pain.

Categories
Frontal Temporal Dementia

The End

After less than three months my husband passed away in the nursing home. Until the very end I thought he would be home again. Taking care of him has been my life for so long how do I learn to take care of me again? I rarely had time to think of what I wanted it was always looking for what he wanted or needed. I go in a store now and I think I don’t need to purchase that now because he is gone, I don’t need to make the weekly trips to Dunkin for him or to the bakery. I have heard of women who take care of men for years and when they die the woman follows soon after. This blog is what I am using to save me.

Categories
Frontal Temporal Dementia

Today’s Troubles

My husband of 30 years is in a nursing home. They tell me he is close to the end. I should be sad I think but instead I feel relief that I am done with his demands and finally have some peace. I am not lonely even though the house is large and I occupy it with only my little schnauzer. It has been so long since I have not had someone that I need to wait on or respond to that I love this feeling of complete autonomy.