It’s my belief that few of us could really quantify how much our loved ones suffered, and just as importantly, how much our love and care helped to reduce that suffering. How could we know, how well would they be able to describe it. What language is there. I’m not just talking physical suffering but the overarching effects of that suffering on the psyche.
My wife had a simple reply when I asked her about physical suffering, she was always “fine”. I know she had discussed more with her cousin, who was like a sister to her, than she did with me. Her cousin had lost her husband to a similar brain tumour thirty years earlier and we saw that story unfold.
My own belief is that I will never really know how much she suffered, but my imagination doesn’t leave it there. I often wonder if I could be as strong, as brave, but, of course, I will have nobody that close to care to the extent I did. Nobody to hide it from. Another effect is that I don’t feel that I can wimp out of things. I think that’s because I was, and am, inspired by my wife. I don’t think I could walk unaided all the way to the operating theatre facing an operation on my brain even once, never mind the twice she did.
The end result for each of us is the same, despite how different our journeys were. Fortunately it doesn’t have to be a final destination and we may be able to move to different places. Obviously we can’t change what happened and we still have choices.
It worries me that I think it’s the worst thing that will ever happen to me as, in the fullness of time, it may not be, and how would I cope with that.
…well it won’t be a coping through gardening strategy you use will it. But you could always throw yourself into designing a remote control hoe 
I’m convinced that my lack of enthusiasm for gardening will be the thing that torments me on my deathbed. Being born on the right side of the Pennines leaves little else to cause any regret.
This is the time I would be using a ‘yawn’ emoji
Behave or I will wish a bad case of the Emojis on you. Failing that it’s wax dolls and pins.
I’m presuming the yawn is down to all that work or should that be “pleasure”.
I didn’t do any at all today. I rebelled. Against who exactly, or what, I have no idea!!!
Maryjane, I am so sorry for the terrible time you had while caring for your husband, I know exactly what it was like and it tears you apart to watch them suffer. Why is life so cruel. I too watched my husband deteriorate very slowly at first but it was rapid at the end. My husband who was a keen walker, cyclist, painter, photographer and of course allotment worker in the end could barely walk from one room to the other. In the end I was nearly carrying him. Until he couldn’t move at all. I have photo’s of him around the house and in them he is fit and well and I am trying hard to forget the bad days and remember him looking so healthy…
I think that’s the way to go Pattidot. I found it really tough to see my wife deteriorate to such a point that I had to do everything for her, and I know it wasn’t about me. I always told her I would do anything for her, never imagining that would be the reality one day. I doubt I meant it anyway. I know she was grateful, as she told people. I just hope the need to rely on me didn’t add to her discomfort.
I realise that there’s little point on dwelling on that time as I did my best and can’t change anything now. I have this great depth of sadness that she had to suffer as she did but I’m also glad that she didn’t suffer in ways I had imagined she would do. I agree that ‘life’ can be cruel, and look back on a TV report from Syria where a man was being interviewed after a rocket destroyed his house, killing his wife and four children. It’s an image that haunts me just as much as that of my wife’s final minutes.
Forgetting the bad days is probably unlikely but maybe the pain will be reduced when we do look back. I don’t suppose many of us took photos that show the suffering and, as my wife was a smiler, it’s possible to get the occasional lift in a memory.
I have a lovely photo of Iain sitting in the garden about 8 years ago and grinning with his goofy tooth that he never got fixed. It’s on a pinboard in front of me along with several others dating back up to about 50+ years ago. I look at them a lot as I’m afraid of forgetting how he was before he became ill.
I’ve enjoyed following these posts. Have so much respect for you out there battling your sorrows and showing compassion for others who are going through the mill albeit via a different route.
I’m learning almost a year on that no two days are the same and dealing with grief is not a linear progression. Some days I’m finding are ‘better’ in that I think I’m more my old self, have some motivation for life, then wallop, next day a blithering mess. Have given up trying to explain it …it just is. What we’re encountering is literally life-changing…part of us has gone with our loved one. That hole is going to take some healing…then some more, and the scar will always be there.
So, all the best, wishing you a good night’s sleep and some peace and calm in your lives to come. Annette xx
I remember when my Dad died in 2007. He was poorly for approx a year. He never complained. Ever. My hero for all of my life. In the first few months after his death whenever I thought of him, I thought of him poorly. I thought of his bravery throughout. I thought of his gratitude throughout. I thought of his acceptance throughout. One day I realised whenever I brought him to mind these were my memories. The same day I realised that was so unfair to him. Unfair to a man who for all my life had rarely, if ever, been anything other than fit and well. Who had always made me laugh with his wicked and very funny sense of humour. A man who loved his wife and family and, life in general. A man who had been my Dad for 45 years and on this earth for approaching 75 years. He so didn’t deserve to be remembered for the last year of his life, and, I’m sure he would have been pretty naffed off that was the way I was remembering him. From that day on I remember him for all that he was in the other 44 years of my life and not in the 45th.
Because of how I was with my initial thoughts of my Dad back in 2007 I try really hard to not focus on the latter part of my husbands life. I’m not always successful, not at all, but I do try to dismiss those memories and remember the much bigger picture. I’m sure he too would be pretty naffed off with me if I didn’t and I can’t say I would blame either of them for feeling that way. They both deserve so much more and I try my best to ensure they get it!
I hope to get to a point where I can do more of that and even during the period of my wife’s illness there are good memories when she was enjoying periods of her life. My father died in 2000 after eight years of losing him bit by bit with Alzheimers. That’s a very strange way to lose someone and I have to look back a very long way to remember his best years. My mother died over 2 years ago and she was living with terminal illness at the same time as my wife. I think that made things worse as I was unable to process it all sufficiently well to give her the love and care I felt she deserved. Fortunately my two brothers lived close. Just to make things harder my aunt was ill and she relied on her three nephews to support and help her.
So much has happened in such a short time that there’s hardly been time to draw breath and hopefully there’s now a period of respite and consolidation. I think that now is the time to look back at all of their lives and to remember more of what they were and how they shaped my life and made me the person I am. Each one of them had their part to play. I suppose it’s trying to move to celebrating their lives from mourning their deaths, a gradual change of emphasis.
Good morning YorkshireLad and Good mourning. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. The last paragraph is very thought provoking. Such positivity. I like the way you think. What a good way to start the day.
Thanks Kate,
It’s just trying to make sense of a series of random events and how that fits in with the fallout, or the collateral damage. I’m fairly sure there’s no sense to be made. I read in an article that we are members of the Grief Club, a club that’s been in existence for all eternity, and that former members may have struggled with just the same questions, and failed to find answers. A lot of my life was spent looking for answers, or solutions, and I think I’ve just become conditioned to particular ways of thinking. Looking back, my thinking" out loud" was often laid out on paper or my wife acted as a sounding board. At work, group thinking sessions were the norm. I do miss all that.
Well hopefully this forum provides something of what you need. Intelligent conversation is one of the things I miss most. The way me and my husband thought the same, I can’t have that with anyone else. We had the same political views. Of course we didn’t agree on everything all of the time but then that makes for good conversation. My dogs are great company but they don’t have a view point and they don’t answer back! I miss that…
Thank you for sharing how the way you learned to view your grief when your dad died is helping you now.
I will definitely try to learn from that perspective. Unfortunately it has been the last 56 days of my husband’s life, from his out of nowhere terminal diagnosis, that are always at the forefront of my my mind for the last nine months rather than the 56 years that I knew and loved him.
I do feel guilty if I try not to think of those days it was after all him that had to live with the knowledge , suffering and indignities of what was happening so it feels wrong that I should choose not to think of them.
He was however a practical and stoical man that I’m sure would be telling me I have to get on with life, which I have been trying to do and though I don’t think the deep emptiness will ever lessen I must give living a good life my best try for him.
Thank you again for your thoughts.
Xx
Hello Yorkshire Lad, only just logged on and catching up with all the wonderful posts. I thank you all. I too know that Brian was grateful for my care as he was always leaving me messages thanking me. I have them all. I even have three text on my phone where he told me he loved me and always would and thanking me again. The illness ravaged him but I never stopped telling him he was my handsome husband. He hated having to rely on me for everything, he was a very private man, but he did become accustomed to it. Unfortunately he became demanding and bad tempered the last weeks, I put it down to the medication, frustration and pain but it was upsetting to hear him telling me off, because it was so out of character. Anyway enough of that !!! My husbands love of photography and always having a camera handy means that I have loads of photographs of him and I have had some enlarged and framed all over the house. He is smiling at me, fit and out of pain. My father died suddenly in his forties, he was a good looking man, fit and that is the memory I have of him. I dream of him and he is still in his forties. I never had to see him suffer and the memories are good ones. Of my Brian I have to try and blot out his suffering. Did you see on the news of the recent bombing and a man lost his two children and wife, how does anybody recover from that. How I feel for him. They need our prayers. Pat xx
I too like your attitude and it’s an excellent way to try and remember our loved one’s, I am certainly going to give it a try. Brian had his part to play in my life and I will seriously try to move to celebrating his life. I made sure of this at his funeral and now I should start to do it for real. Thank you for giving me that little push. Pat xx
I too look at the photographs and remember. One in front of me now is of him in shorts when we was walking the mountains in Greece. So fit, so strong, so lovely. This is how he will remain to me. Take care Pat xxxx
It seems such a shame that the dominant memories are often about who they weren’t rather than who they really were.
Somehow I feel I need to change that and to redress the balance. I’m fairly sure many others feel like that.
Unfortunately during the four years of my wife’s illness a disproportionate number of days seem to dominate and most of them were the very painful ones.