He’s not getting better

I “know” he’s not going to get better but lately, perhaps freed of the daily – no hourly – no minute by minute – grind of caregiving, it is hitting me hard. I can hardly bear to write it, but he is not getting better and. . . I don’t think he will.

Residual tears pour down my face, after a good long session of howling into the quilts. He won’t be coming back.

I “know” all this – have known for a dozen years and wept -but still, as day by day i visit and he makes less and less of his very own sweet darling nutsy sense (which i have become used to and enjoy), the pain gathers again and again.

Loss by loss by day by day. The news I can’t share, the advice he can’t give.

Last night he had a sense that we two should be going, hit the road perhaps, although that’s a lot of words that don’t make sense to him any more. But a rather fragile walk to look outside was more than enough (as i thought) to quash that,  as he looked horrified at the dark and the lights outside.

He won’t be coming back and we’ll never hit the road again. And I can’t stand this grief.

Over and over, just as we travelled across Canada to his Madawaska river home, over and over.