JOAN’S BLOG – MON/TUE., AUGUST 29/30, 2011 – ENVY

We Alzheimer Spouses go through a lot of different emotions over the course of the disease that is claiming our husbands and wives in a slow, torturous manner– shock, sadness, heartbreak, resentment, anger, loneliness, envy……………you can add many more to the list.

I have experienced most of them, but envy is a new one for me, and I am uncomfortable with it. The definition of envy is to feel discontent and desirous of something another person possesses. It is not an emotion I am proud to feel; it is an emotion I had hoped to avoid feeling. But it snuck up on me, and I am stuck trying to deal with it.

As Alzheimer spouses, many of us envy the love, companionship, equal partnership, and adult conversation that other long married couples are experiencing. We see that they still have the “look”; the secret signals; the “connection”, and a lifetime of memories – everything that Alzheimer’s Disease has taken from us. I miss that desperately. I am angry that Alzheimer’s Disease has destroyed it.  

But what I envy most about these couples is their FREEDOM. Living in Florida, as we do, affords us the opportunity to come and go to outdoor fairs, concerts, marine attractions, historic and educational sites, and Disney parks, all year round. We have friends who decide they want to go to St. Augustine for a long weekend. They throw some clothes in a suitcase, and off they go. They decide they want to visit Kennedy Space Center – off they go. They plan cruises and trips to Europe; take a spontaneous ¼ mile trek to the beach, or a weekend at a wine tasting festival. Of course, I do not have the funds for lengthy, expensive trips, but there is much to see and do within 2 hours North or South of where I live that is not particulaly expensive. Then there’s the beach – oh, how I miss the beach. And I live 10 miles from it.

My husband’s Alzheimer’s Disease and physical disabilities prevent us from experiencing such freedom. Wheelchairs that my shoulder surgery prevents me from pushing; severe pain from neuropathy and stress fractures render him barely able to move faster than a turtle, even with his walker. Spontaneity stresses him to obsess on where we are going, what we are going to do, when we are going to do it. His non-existent short term memory insures that once he is told where, what, and when, he will forget it, and ask again and again and again. Which stresses me.

So I watch and envy. I do not like feeling envy. It is a nasty, wasted emotion. But at this time in my life, I cannot help it. I want the freedom that other couples have. I want the husband I had, so we can experience that lost freedom. I have neither, and I am envious of those who do.

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