JOAN’S BLOG – MON/TUE., APRIL 11/12, 2011 – CONFLICTED

This blog was weeks in the planning stage because it was so emotionally difficult to write. I am not sure I would have publicly expressed these thoughts if I had not discussed them with a friend who secretly shared my feelings. Her admission made me realize that perhaps many of you share my conflicting emotions.

I am so tired of living the Alzheimer Life. I am tired of living with, and trying to take care of, a man who bears resemblance to my beloved husband in facial features only. His personality, abilities, actions, words – are those of someone I barely recognize. I am tired of subjugating my wants and needs for his. I am tired of being stressed, angry, and resentful. I wish I were not those things, but I am. I want this whole mess to be over before I am too old to start living again.

Unfortunately, “being over” means that my husband will die. I could understand wishing for a peaceful death for him if he were in the end, infantile, fetal stages of the disease, but he is not. He is functioning. Slowly, with little memory of anything that happens or is said, with little to no focusing ability, with little to no reasoning ability, but he is functioning, and can still pull it together in public for an hour or two.

On one side of my conflict is -  Of course I do not want him to die. I cannot imagine my life without the man who has been by my side for 2/3 of my adult life. This is the man I have turned to for strength, security, love, fun, comfort and safety. I have been the woman he has turned to for the same. Until Alzheimer’s Disease invaded our lives, living without each other was unthinkable.

On the other side of the conflict is – Is this the rest of my life? By the time this is over, 1/3 of my marriage could have been devoted to Alzheimer’s Disease, with the rest of our time together faded into a distant memory. This is a dreadful dilemma – That my husband has to die for me to live again? I reject that choice with every fiber of my being, and yet………………………..that seems to be the only option Alzheimer’s Disease has given me.  I will never again have the life with him that we shared for the first 35 year of our marriage. I will live in this Alzheimer World with a man who is not the husband I knew. I will live with, and take care of, the dependent child he has become…….until Alzheimer’s Disease kills him.

More sides to the conflict - I have discussed in other blogs, the need for Alzheimer spouses to develop lives of their own while they are still caregiving. The thinking behind such an idea is that the old life is gone; our spouses are never going function better than they do today; and we need to start building a life, friendships, and activities outside of the Alzheimer World NOW. I honestly do not know if I am capable of living in two worlds. In thinking about it, I look back and want the life I can no longer have; I don’t want my husband to die, although that is the only way I will be released from this Hell; and the idea of living a life of my own while he is still alive is difficult for me to grasp.

Conflicting emotions surround me. I hate all of them. I hate my choices. I hate the Alzheimer’s Disease that has thrown me into this conflict. I am an Alzheimer Spouse and this is my life.

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