In the depths of my depression during those 15 years of caregiving, I would stop the wallowing and promise myself that after my dad died and my love died, my own life would stop or restart.
But dad’s been gone years, and it is 3 years today since my sweet man left for other dimensions.
Any attempts at a new life have not been convincing. Not to me on the inside, anyway.
Mind you, I have/had worked very very hard mentally and physically for 5 decades, secretly grieving a lot of that time. Maybe it is enough. It was a good life and overall an awful lot of fun.
Maybe quiet small pleasures, like the tinkling of a brook, or the soothing sound of waves, or wind on the face, are the aftermath of passion.
Maybe now is the time to savour tea (or beer!) and long lingering times with friends, not doing or even always talking, or thinking, just being.
Maybe time to let go of all the shoulda? Is that thought immoral? I watch myself finishing or ending one obligation, then pick up another. And I wonder.
But most of all I remember that afternoon, after the testing with the geriatric psychiatrist. He was skipping happily across the lawn at the old St. Joe hospital, and I was struggling along.
He stopped and said, “What’s wrong with you? All the joy’s gone out of you.”
As I realised I couldn’t tell him – he could no longer understand – I knew then I was to become a very loved and very loving, but very lonely person. Not, by the way, that this is an unusual story at all, but it’s mine.
And so it turned out. I still haven’t quite found that old wondrous joy, although i feel glimpses from time to time. I think it will be quite different when it develops again.
I guess that was the day my world changed, so many years ago.
And now it has to change again.
CaringCV 