swilkinson

Kukzee, welcome to the Blog Community. I am very impressed by your proactive views on rehabilitation and hope you will become a regular blogger and help us to see how all the improvements in your life have come about with exercises etc. We are all here to help and support each other so your contributions will be much appreciated.

Sounds good jay, surrounded by family, and with the phone calls lots of loving messages. yes, it is good to have that second chance at life, contiue enjoying life as you do.

Jay glad you finally have a date for the hearing.

Julie, thanks for coming on and updating us, I wondered how you were coping with summer heat. I am so glad Larry has put on weight and is enjoying life at home again, keep him out of the SNF for as long as you are able to cope. I know what you means about having a son home after 15 years as we did that with Trev some years back, but he was wonderful with Ray so no complaints. Hope your son gets a full time job soon. Keep enjoying your life, it can be good even with the caregiving as long as you accept it is what it is.

Welcome to our Blog Community John, always room for one more. Thanks for posting a blog about your stroke, we are all involved in stroke somehow as a survivor or caregiver so it is always a subject we can learn from. Glad we have started to get to know you. The OPC seems like a great place to exercise and get to know others in a similar situation,sounds like you are doing well,keep up the good work.

Pam, I think all of this is about lack of privacy. it is a problem in nursing homes and however nice your roommate seems at the beginning there will always be squabbles. I think at this stage you just wait and see what happens, go on with your activities, take any chance to get some alone time and just quietly enjoy being the person you are. There are times in all our lives when we go through this and somehow come out stronger people. I don't know how it works it just does.

Sarah good news is so important. These days we join in global news and mourn for people we have never met and rightly so BUT local news contains good news too, babies, weddings, fun family events and we have to make the most of those. It is good news about your niece and nephew, good you are getting away for a few days too. Enjoy.

Lenny thanks for the encouraging blog, I hope others take your good advice and get out and walk. Enjoy your summer.

Nice outfit, Sandy. You do so well keeping Bob safe, and keeping him comfortable. You have excelled yourself this time by making him look good as well as feel comfortable. Have a happy summer.

So sorry for your loss. I have followed your blog about your brother all the way through and really feel so sad for you and your family. Sometimes life is so hard. If you can, stay with your parents for a while as it will help you all to be together and share your grief. There will be time to make plans in the future but for now just rest and recover from the journey you have shared.

Over the past few years I have found public holidays and long weekends difficult to cope with. I was out today (Monday) with three other ladies who belong to my Lions Club, the other female member could not come as she has succumbed to a throat infection. Three of us are single and otherwise would have spent today alone. This is the Queen's Birthday Long Weekend so in the past I have found it lonely, this time I packed it full of things to do and it all went well. I am getting better at holidays and special occasions now, I really plan them and that seems to work well. I think I am getting better at living as a single person. I do have some problems with loneliness and think I always will but I am handling it better now than I did maybe a year ago. That is the beauty of having a blog as an online journal, I can look back and see what I did and thought a year ago or two years ago, I can look back and notice the changes in me, and I see your wonderful support in all I do. Thank you Blog Community, your support means so much to me. The blogs are at a new low at the moment so I hope that just means people are busy enjoying the northern summer and do not have time to sit down and write a blog. I know for the survivors in particular writing a blog is a big task so I do really appreciate the effort people put into keeping us updated. It is such a pleasure to keep in touch, to know what people are going through, to feel as if I am a part of their lives. I do think of you all as friends in the cyberspace continuum. Over lunch last week I was discussing with another widow what happens when love comes along the second time. She has been married twice and widowed twice now, she has no intention of remarrying again in her 80s but says she has some wonderful memories from both marriages. She said she was widowed the first time aged 59 and at 61 it was an unexpected surprise when she met a wonderful man and married a year later. She says she would not have missed those years for anything as she and her second husband fulfilled their dreams of travelling and re-established a home open to all the family members from both sides. I have been a recipient of her hospitality so know that is so. I was much encouraged by this conversation, at almost ten years beyond that myself still there is hope of a second person might come into my life as a blessing. I have been meeting up with a man for coffee for two years, about once a month. We met through mutual friends when he had recently lost his partner. Just in the last couple of months we started to go out once a week instead. He is a nice man and about my age BUT he has leukemia. It is under control at present but he says he probably doesn't have much of a future so this is friendship not romance. Still it is nice to go somewhere once in a while with a companion rather than by myself. This slow building up of a relationship is a way that suits me. In my teens it was quite usual to go out with a friend's brother, someone you met at a dance ( that was the way I met Ray) or someone you worked with. Today it is not so easy to meet someone when you are an older widow so I think this slow getting-to-know-you method is much better. Some of the widows I know have been widowed for years and never even thought of another man coming into their lives but I am a friendly person so having a friend is better for me at this stage than having a full on relationship. I can do all of my voluntary work and still have some time left over for a coffee or lunch meet-up. As a widow I need reassurance and support, some of that I get from family and friends in real life, some I get from this site. I guess my friends get tired of that sometimes and wonder when I will be "over it" but I think in some ways I never will. The person I expected to spend the whole of my life with, the one who I said: "till death us do part" to, has gone. No-one knew me as well as Ray did, no-one supported me and was strong for me the way he was. That is why I support others, both on here and in my regular life, I have been there and done that. I know the widows I visit in the nursing homes were once loved and cherished by someone special but now that person is gone and with it all the love and affection and that there is no substitute for that love. I know, because I am experiencing that myself now. The rest of the family seems to be okay, their lives are busy and I am glad when they find time to reach out to me. They are all productive members of their communities and I am glad for that too. I am sad that Ray is not around to see them, to watch the grandchildren grow, to applaud their achievements and know them as I do. I am pleased they sometimes think of me and want to have me around, Trevor is particularly insistent that I visit regularly so that his daughter Alice knows me well and so that I can enjoy her early years and influence her life. I am meeting up with Steve's ex-wife this week for dinner, she is still the mother of my grandchildren and I still think of her as my daughter-in-law, i don't know if that is what she is as they are divorced now but not sure what you call someone after that. Winter may be here with it's short dark days but today was a good day and that is how I want to to be.

Ruth, you need to make some time for those days out and bus tours you used to have with William, keep him interested in life. So glad you are finding plenty to do in your area for retirees, I always liked to think of myself as a retiree because it puts that caregiver tag in the background. Keep up the routine if that helps but allow some variations, life is short and you need to enjoy it.

Kelli, if there is an agreement between you and you ex about custody for you son then that is the document you need to cite. If you are doing extra childminding then you need to be doing it as a PAID job as it is not included in your agreement. I am going through the opposite with my son, he wants to be the custodian of his daughter and has in his opinion too little contact. I guess there is no middle road on this one so it has to be based on what was agreed on previously.

Love to imagine you watching the movie and joining in the singing Pam - enjoy.

Fred, not a baseball fan just a Fred fan, enjoy watching your sport. A least we can still cheer others on.

Jay, it all sounds like great fun and yes we grandparents do find things very funny sometimes when we look at the little cousins up to their shenanigans. I am glad Grandpa was off limits. Good idea. And a small hand print in a birthday cake does no harm, we all have to eat a peck of dirt before we die, or so my mother used to say.

I just watched Mama Mia, watched the joy of youth, the fun of middle age and the insanity that sometimes comes over us. It was a wreck of a day today, high winds, heaps of rain, dull, miserable and awful weather for my 69th birthday but I enjoyed every minute of it. I had Shirley my daughter and her husband and kids here over night so we had breakfast, what my grandson calls "BIG Breakfast", bacon, eggs, mushrooms, tomato, potatoes and baked beans, Christopher loves it and the others say "you shouldn't have" and eat it all up. We usually sit out on the verandah together after breakfast but because of the lashing rain stayed inside and played my gift "Just Dance 2016" on the Nintendo Wii and the grandkids, my daughter and I took turns with the two remotes and laughed at each others antics. It warmed us up and made us feel good. I had some phone calls from friends including one from the man I work most closely with at church who sang to me, despite the fact that he doesn't sing, he just did it because i asked him to and he thought it was a good idea. I don't usually have a lot of phone calls so that was a great gift. I have a new man in my life, well sort of, as it is early days yet and he rang twice this morning and this afternoon. He was at home as he has a house in one of the Lake suburbs, on the edge of the Lake Road and they are expecting flooding with a combination of on shore winds and high tides so he was staying home to keep an eye on the situation there. I have had a lot of birthdays in sad situations and it could have been the same this year only for the extra effort my daughter made to make it special. We went out to lunch and then on to the movies to see "Alice Through the Looking Glass". It was not really what I expected but even so I enjoyed it, a lot of action, a lot of Time jokes, a lot of tension but all at the level where it could be enjoyed by children as well as adults. I found it fascinating as it was somewhat the style of the Lewis Carroll original but a lot more Roald Dahl if you see what I mean. I have seen a lot of movies over the years with those two grandchildren and so we often recall those we have seen together. It is another way of bonding, to share experiences and I like that way of spending time with them. Do I think about Ray on my birthday still? Yes I do. I think of some of my birthdays during our 44 years of marriage, the ones spent alone with the kids while he was out on patrol with Fisheries, the ones where we could go out with friends or be with family. There was the 10 and a half years when we lived away from the Coast and the friends we celebrated with were new friends, There were the times when his parents were still alive when we celebrated with his side of the family. The memories do not fade, the sadness is not with me all the time but it is still there in the background. It is sad that he cannot be here, that at the end of the day the family go on home and I am alone again. But it has been a great week for me, I went out with my man on Monday, just a stroll around one of the local shopping centres and some lunch. I went out with a group of women on Tuesday,we are all late May early June birthdays and do this every couple of years. I had Wednesday morning at home and did my Strokenet hosting,but in the afternoon did some nursing home visits. I went into the local hospital on Thursday morning and visited a friend who is younger than me and has had a heart attack, scary really when I think he is so much fitter than me and yet this can happen. I had a church meeting in the afternoon to discuss the future of some of the groups i belong to. We are an ageing church and struggling to keep some of the programs operating well with the volunteers we have. I helped with the church Coffee morning in the morning on Friday and then had lunch out with some of the girls from the Craft group. My daughter and family came late Friday afternoon and we had dinner together and a long chat before bed. It was a lovely way to end a day. And then we had a wonderful day today. Good company, good food and some fun and laughter. From tomorrow I go on with normal life, normal routines again but at least I had this week as a great week. A week with a lot of happenings that would have been impossible in my caregiver days so I am grateful for that. I can live a normal life, in fact I am living a normal life. I am not "over it" but I am getting over it. i can be independent and I can manage alone but when I go out I can still have fun. And so to watching Mama Mia, with the rain still hammering on the roof, the wind still blowing and the temperature dropping. All those scenes of bright blue skies on a lovely Greek Island. It is a reminder that winter must be endured but summer will be here again, that there is joy in life in very unexpected ways, that there is hope in middle age and good things come to people who wait. And they come in unexpected forms. And there is a future for us all, a future based on what we dream but also what we plan. I am enthusiastic about some things in life and that helps to buoy me up when the going gets tough. And i enjoy the reminder of youth in movies, a youth that was filled with Abba songs and with dancing and laughing and being in love with life. As I embark on my 70th year I want to be happy, to have fun and to enjoy life, and when I don't I want to have the courage to go through whatever else my life has in store for me.

No my dear you are not mad. One of my nephews had a TBI from a bike accident and he tells people he has a cracked brain. He is a delight to be around and a blessing to those who know him. So are you so keep positive and live your life joyfully.

Kelli, you are braver than I am, I thought of joining a dating sites but decided i would simply see who is around locally. Slow and steady is my advice. Nice guys are out there. Keep smiling and don't let any hint of rejection worry you, it just means they do not know you like we do.

Will keep praying for you.

Yes, another year is go, happy for you Jay.

Jay I love the way you think. I have a brother-in-law who is legally blind and he gets around just fine. I think our rules in Australia are easier to understand than yours seem to be. I hope you make some progress with your application soon.

Punch, you are needed at home. The support you can give to your parents will be just what they need. You show so much love and compassion for your brother that I am sure he will benefit just by you being there. Stay as long as you are needed, I am sure those you leave behind will be okay and if not they are not your first priority at this time. (((hugs)))

Great blog Sarah. Those were my feelings too as I looked after Ray. Doctors don't know everything, in Ray's case why he continued to have strokes. You do a great job with Gary and are a woman who knows how to use her inner strength. I am proud to know you.

Of course she is a great partner, she is from the Antipodes (wink). Sue.