a gloomy blog
This morning I found it difficult to get out of bed. Not like me as I usually spring up and out, ready for the day. Twelve years of caregiving and always the alarm went off and I was up! Of late I have the alarm on the morning news and just lay back and listen to the headlines for a while. I know that I am stalling but it seems as if this is a part of my life now.
I find the nights the hardest to cope with. In the day I am busy, outside in the garden, inside the house tidying, sorting out and trying to get the house to where Trev and family can move in. In the middle of the day I am with Ray, supervising his lunch, reading to him in the courtyard, taking him for a walk in his wheelchair. I talk to the staff and know most of them by name now. I talk to the other women who come in daily as I do and we form an informal support group. I know I look at them and think “if she can, I can” and I am sure they look at me and feel the same.
At night, after the evening meal, I watch television for a while, come on the computer, phone one of my old friends, knit, sew and crochet, anything to hold the darkness at bay. But I still sometimes wake up from where I went to sleep in my armchair crying over the fact that I cannot bring Ray home again. I know it in my reasoned daytime mind but at night my mind says: “where is my husband, he should be home here with me”.
We have been back here in our own house since 1984 and I seem to have accumulated a lot of memories, well junk really, and as I sit and sort it out it is so hard to throw any of it away. The old school reports, postcards from friends, old magazines with that recipe or article I wanted to keep. I did it with Mum’s house when she moved into care and it took me six weeks. Now I am throwing away so many memories. I know in a way this is a preliminary to moving Trev and family in but somehow it seems more like throwing away the past Ray and I shared. Yep, I am a pack rat for sure.
I know I cannot bring Ray home again. So far I have not even taken him out in the car. He cannot stand up and hold his own weight, cannot walk, cannot....so many things. And I know this is our new reality and I have to accept that. At the home they move him with a Stand-Aide and it takes two of them to maneuver him into bed. I keep thinking that if I had the boys with me we could move him between us. I never had this problem with Mum when she went into care as her problems were old age and Alzheimer’s but she could still walk so I just put her in the car and drove her away from the home for a few hours. I cannot do this with Ray.
Ruth, I have just read your blog, had a cry and decided to be brave and put down some of what I am thinking in words for everyone to see. It is not a pretty blog, a bit raw and confronting, It makes me uncomfortable just writing it. I am hoping by doing so that I will see it for what it is – my reality.
I am often where you are now. I am still not reconciled to the fact that Ray is in a nursing home and I cannot bring him home. I am still getting used to going in there with my "smiley face" on and being bright and breezy with the staff and taking him out into the sunlight etc. I know this is not what I want to do, I want to bring him home, go on with our lives but logistically it cannot be done. I would never be able to afford the extra pairs of hands I would need to bring home a man who needs three people to take him to the bathroom, shower him etc. I hate the reality of all that.
I read the other blogs on here and wonder how some of the people like Sarah, and Missy, Steve Mallory’s wife can care for their very disabled loved one in their own home as they do. I think my stumbling block is that Ray is both physically and mentally affected by his stroke. He has no logic and no process thinking, so even if I say: “right foot forward Ray, now I will swing the left foot forward, now you swing the right” he cannot follow that instruction. So he is unable to do anything to help himself or to help me help him.
I’m sorry, those of you who are not at this stage yet, to cast these gloomy thoughts in here. Just remember that it is mine and Ray’s story, twelve years on from a couple of major strokes and not everyone’s story. I remember the ending of one of my favorite TV series, which went something like: ”There are xxx millions stories in this city, this has been just one of them”. The next blog will be more cheerful, I promise.
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