Yesterday the doctor suddenly became firm that we should file Do Not Resuscitate orders. Don did not understand the conversation, I think, but today, after several days of shaky behaviour, overly exhausted, somewhat querulous, a bit paranoid and suspicious, today, he realised what was happening. We were talking about where Courtenay was, and he was getting impatient, so I took him for a drive in the car: “This is Comox, this is the bridge, this is Courtenay….” I wasn’t cross, but when he came home he said, “Now I see what is happening. I won’t be here very long.”
A wonderful new review book had come in the mail, addressed to him, because he used to edit the magazine with me, The New BC Roadside Naturalist: A Guide to Nature Along BC Highways, (Greystone Books) with discussion of all the roads we loved to travel. Don quietly looked at the book, and cried and cried. I cried too, but not as much as I would have three years ago.
CaringCV 
Oh my I am so sad for you both. It just breaks my heart this terrible journey we are all on. It is so hard to lose someone slowly every day, no one can imagine how it feels. I am thinking about you and sending prayers . My friend told me yesterday that a recent survey showed
that in a group of people age 60 to 90 the ones that are caring for a loved one with dementia are 67 % more likely to die than the people who are not caretakers. YIKES
LikeLike
My heart and prayers go out to you both. That grief that we carry just never ends and something hits us and it seems so much worse.
LikeLike
I sit here now, going over and over your last note, and shedding sooooooooooo many tears. My big brother whom I worship, has been reduced to shedding his own tears, it makes me extremely sad, not only for him, but for Delores. He was always a happy, jovial man, always a smile..why oh why has “life” taken that away from him, taken that away from us.
LikeLike
Ah Shari but more from us than from him — overall and most of the time he is pretty happy — simple, but happy. And he knows he is loved and well-looked after – just now he has gone out with one of his caregivers, and as he left he thanked me AND her for looking after him: “You take good care of me.” Some people get really aggravated, but he has stayed sunny and appreciative, so that in many ways this is just a long, strange but sweet time together – in some ways more intimate than when we were all busy talking and planning and being ambitious……
In these little notes I am trying to capture the various moments of this weird life, and don’t let me mislead you – it is not all sad.
LikeLike