The lockdown for flu at the nursing home ended but we couldn't break her fever and the doctor suspected pneumonia but it was clear that she was tired and I told her to let go when I saw her this afternoon. She was ready to give the struggle up and did so at 7:50 this evening. I went to see her again later that she had truly passed and as I turned to leave I put my hand on her still warm hand and said, "You know, you look just like Queen Nefertiti".
I cried so hard this afternoon. I told her how much I love her and stroked her now coarse hair. I went through a half box of tissues which I took with me and pulled this bulging wad of wet tissues out when I got home. I could have made a small white rabbit out of them. I was glad to finally be able to allow that damn to burst which I had held in check for so very long. And just a few hours later I went back to see with my own eyes that she had let go.
I've made all the phone calls and have sent the emails. I've talked to most of the staff and let them know how deeply I appreciate how they loved Dianne and cared for her. We were again fortunate in life to have that. We've all known for days that this is it. Some of them just hugged me and told me how sorry they were even though Dianne was still with us. Horny lady was there too. Horny lady has the hots for me and has for three years. When she came up to me with this huge grin on her face I laughed saying "I know what you want" and ran away. I've been doing that for three years and now all this support for us ends.
Both the nursing home and this place were my connections to the real reality of dementia. And those chapters are parts of the story of our lives together; Dianne's and mine. We were together for just over 46 years and she died when she was 63. So long kid. And you're not going anywhere.
Dear Wolf, my arms are reaching out to enfold you,all the way from Australia. Your beautiful Dianne is free at last. I wish you peace and strength for the days ahead. cassie*
Dear Wolf, I am so, so sorry. When you posted a few days ago that Dianne had the flu again, along with a high fever, I wondered how she could possibly survive that. I am thinking of you and hoping that you will somehow survive the loss of your beloved companion since childhood. -- myrtle
You had the best, Wolf - and she also had the best! I hope some measure of peace and contentment will come into your life in the days, weeks, months and years ahead. Thinking of you.
Wolf,I am so sorry for the loss of your dear Dianne.Even tho we know it is coming nneverless it is still hard to accept.You were an inspiration to us with your never failing love for her. May you find peace now that she is at peace.
Wolf, I am so sorry for the loss of Dianne. No one is ever ready, even when it is obvious that the end is near and inevitable. The love you had (have) for each other is what will get you through this. You took great care of her…now try to take care of yourself. Arms around.
Ahhh Wolf....so sorry for the huge hole in your heart. I know it has been there for a long time, but it sure does hurt to have the scab ripped off and feel the rawness of it again. I am glad that the chains of AD bondage are broken for you both! Please be patient and kind with yourself. We all love you so!!! Prayers for you for the difficult days to come....whether you like it or not!
Wolf, May God grant you the peace that passes understanding. Such a love story you have to tell. To have loved and been loved by such a wonderful husband is truly a legacy for Diane to leave. So grateful that you were with her and urgingher to go. That will mean alot to you in later years. Yes so young, try to remember the good good times. We are all here to support you and I am sending you a virtual hug from south georgia. Prays for you .
Oh my dear Wolf, I am deeply sorry for your loss. I know your Dianne was the biggest part of your heart. I hope you know that you are in my thoughts, prayers and heart. I do hope and pray you can find peace in your heart. You have endured so much sadness and pain. Sending you (((Hugs)))
So sorry but yet happy you are both free from this horrific nightmare. Honor the love and life you had together by going forward and living the life Dianne would want you to have.
Dear Wolf, I don't know what to say or how to console you. You and Dianne have (had) a true love story. You beat the odds that all young lovers face...you grew up together and made a great life with each other. Forty-six years is a long time to be with someone and the loss of the other half of you no doubt will be difficult. But she is finally free from the Alz devil and her free spirit is renewed. Sending prayers your way.
Wolf, I don't know you and yet I do. Because of your open heart and funny humor and sharing of experiences I connect with you as a friend. Because of that I know that your Diane must have also been a wonderful lady. You both were lucky in life and love and I am very sorry for your loss. You both deserve peace and I hope you find it soon along with some happiness on your remaining journey.
I was shocked to hear this Wolf, and my condolences on the loss of your beloved Dianne. I know she is free now..yet...it is still so hard. Love to you Wolf.
May your days be now filled with peace. You are entering our roller coaster ride of grief for our loss and relief that her suffering is over. May God give you strength to get through this.
What a gift you have given all of us in your sharing of yourself and Dianne through these years. I wish you the same generosity to yourself. This comes with prayers for comfort, peace and resolution for both of you.
Wolf so very sorry to hear this sad news. Your battle hasnt ended but only the disease part. The road to recovery for we caregivers in the after is long and arduous. Take time to weep and reflect. It helps to heal our hearts. Peace to you- divvi*
How I feel your sadness. Throughout this journey with your beautiful Dianne, you have poured out our heart here with us in such profound ways. I am at a loss for words to express to you how much you mean to all of us here. You have said with such prose what most of us, except for georgieboy, are want to put into words.
We do know one thing, those of us with the *, and that is just how much you do miss your beautiful wife of 46 years, have missed her for years prior to this final farewell. This new road you are on now is not an easy one and I hope you will stay with us a while. There is much to learn, and those of us with the * are learning things we never knew we would have to face..It is a salvation to know we don't have to do it alone.
In the meantime, I hope you can now get some rest and and find peace. Hugs to you. I am soooo sorry for your loss.
Wolf...... ......Since I first came upon this site I've always felt a closeness to you because your love stories of your life with Dianne were so real to me and you have a way of letting it all out. You are of a younger generation than I, and your Alzheimer's journey much longer than mine, but I think I can understand what you've been through. ......I still read everything written here every day and have great empathy for everyone, and sometimes feel guilty that my own journey was so easy by comparison. I have nothing to contribute that would help. I'm not religious so I can't offer prayers. All I have to offer is my feelings and I feel how you're feeling right now, Wolf, I really do. ......Now Wolf, you're still young and have a lot of living yet to do, and as time goes by, you'll be putting Dianne a little further into the back of your mind and I'm sure you're thinking about what comes next. You have great artistic talent and writing abilities. I can hardly believe all the great stories you have written that lie buried in the archives of this site. I have a hard time digging them up. Just yesterday I was again looking over your "Wolf Von Munchcake". Flickr site. Great stuff ,Wolf, but you need to add some stories to your photos. ......I would like to encourage you to get a little website where you could put everything that you contribute here along with photos and whatever. You have so much to offer, Don't waste it. Your friend GeorgieBoy
P.S. Watch out for the Horny Ladies......There will probably be a lot of them....
Hi guys, thank you all so much. Reports of my demise are however premature and ideas of what I'm going through will be reported on several weeks from now. We are both released. I've had three years on my own to grieve. The funeral home wanted to spruce her up a bit before I identified her formally. I saw her last night though with her mouth and eyes wide open and her body still warm.
I don't see how I could be suprised by anything here except repressed feelings and as some of you have commented and many of you know - with me that doesn't happen much. She is free and so am I. And that's how it feels.
I can relax over the weekend and let whatever it is happen. I told my nephew yesterday to take a hike. His usefullness to Dianne is over. Getting hit in the face with that in the midst of expressing grief is a shock. I know because he did that to me. I've been accused here of being 'soft'. Unlike the strutting imbeciles, I just kill the prey.
I have nothing to prove. We got through this. She's at peace finally. This is the first day of the rest of my life. And that is not an expression.
Thanks again for all the kind words. And Bama, I love you too. Where were you when I was sixteen?
Wolf, am so sorry for your loss. Take care of yourself now and find rest and peace. You have given so much to so many for so long on this site, and this fellow Canuck is truly grateful for your humour and wisdom.
Wolf, I was so sorry to hear about Dianne. I wish you my deepest sympathies for your loss. But we know you lost her a long time ago. I hope you have some peace now. Being with someone you love for such a long time is a marvelous thing. I've been with mine for 56 years, since I was 17 also.
Your stories have made me laugh and made me think and some even managed to make me feel chastised as by an old aunt. I read your note above telling us about Dianne this morning and had tears in my eyes for someone I didn't even really know except for this site. I couldn't write then, couldn't gather my thoughts together. I read practically everything you wrote here and looked forward to your words every day. I agree with George that someday you need to gather up some of these things you wrote and do something with them. You have a gift, Wolf.
In the meantime, I wish you time to gather yourself and get some peace of mind and think of all the wonderful times you and Dianne had together, not linger on the horrible years of AD.
Very sorry for the loss of your Dianne, but I hope you will take a special time to raise a glass in her honour, thanking her for all the good times she brought to your life, and just sharing with her spirit all what you had together. Sincere best wishes going forward.
Wolf, it's so hard to put into words the sadness I feel for you at this time. You and Dianne fought the good fight with courage and honesty. May you find peace in the memories of your life together. You have been a wonderful presence to all of us on this site. You are in our thoughts and prayers.
Ah, just logged in after being away for some time. I suppose I shouldn't be shocked when any of our spouses die but I am, every time. Especially this time because you've shared many of your thoughts so openly. Goodbye, Wolf's Dianne. My deepest sympathy, Wolf.
Just one hour before I got that phonecall about Dianne where I had just left her a couple of hours before that, my nephew phoned. He's been a cold fish to me since we got AD which wasn't uncommon and out of the fourteen nieces and nephews I have, we were very close. When he transferred to Toronto years ago and faced living alone in a hotel for months, I invited him in to our lives to live with us. We had a blast and we introduced the movie FARGO to him which Dianne and I used in our lexicon. We went fishing way up north once because I told him about a spot I knew near the Quebec border and suddenly we were in the car and left Dianne a note that we had no idea when we'd be back. When we got AD, it migrated for him, and I think deep down because he just couldn't deal with his Uncle Wolf beaten and on his knees.
When I phoned my SIL in California, my BIL answered and I told him I had sad news. "About Dianne?" he asked pointedly. Yes I said. So he bellowed out "It's Wolf with bad news about your sister. Do you want to take it?" He has always had a problem with empathy not about himself. It turns out that same nephew had just hung up having a tirade about me.
Like most such things the details are mundane and boring but the passions and outrage are almost interchangable with many of our own particular experiences. It's delicious to me that Frick had to phone Frack back and tell his righteous indignation his aunt was gone.
None of that matters soon. I am not a married man. I have no in-laws. And that clan, while fine people really, are so bereft of emotional integrity and one supposes keep cue-cards to remember who's pretending what didn't happen with whom, that I will not miss and have not once missed their ideas of normal.
Dan and Dan called. They're a great couple and the opposite emotionally. I've known young Dan since he was a baby and he always phones his uncle wolf on his birthday and at christmas. It's his mother, the dwarf, who has moved into her daughter's basement (which is fine but she won't remember she's renting and fortunate within say a few months and will instead become her usual self), and we talked about that where Dan told his mom he could never live with her. I asked him how long he thought it would last and he answered this had to be short term which is why he encouraged her not to sell her house but to rent it out. The family set their own 'rent' at a good point where it's good for her and it helps the young couple pay the humungous mortgage. The problem is that months from now she will migrate from feeling lucky and working with what she has, to being herself which only works if you actually own the place and they actually are kids - not adults.
I was on the phone so long two days ago that the battery ran out twice and my ears were tired. I'm fortunate to have a lot of connections but I tired fairly quickly of the sticking point in so many of the sympathy conversations that there would be no service. They need their avenue to grieve you see and I respect that that is so; but, I have no interest in going through such a process for the kiddie pool while my need to grieve is a fossilized prune.
I had three offers from good friends to come out to Kitchener and stay overnight and keep me company and I had two offers to come to them and be among support. It felt good to hear that but I know how this works. They're feeling what they have suppressed and five minutes later I'll be right back here where I already am.
I don't understand suppression of facts or reality but it hit me like a ton of bricks in the face to walk into her room and see the body of Dianne without Dianne. Her mouth and eyes were open and that horrible shock of seeing a body but not Dianne will stay with me for some time. It was my duty IMO to witness with my own eyes and I have learned a great deal about the human being either being buffeted by events or taking charge of themselves in those same buffeting events.
Dianne is already cremated. This long, long battle is over and my poor Dianne suffered more from it than I ever did or will because she lost absolutely everything to it while I am now starting a new life which I've gotten in shape for and have worked hard for during the three years I had still going through it all but with time and solitude to start gluing pieces back together with a level of seriousness I've never felt before in my life. The motivation was terror. That's exactly where I was in April 2012 when I began talking about it here.
So many people have told me how highly they think of me and how true I've been to her these last three days that I've lost count. It's an insight into the falesness of that when we really do consider the alternatives. Leave them. Or ignore their plight. Or try and survive it. I don't see a fourth alternative where I think you would have to be truly overcome to commit suicide. That doesn't change that sticking makes caregivers noble human beings. I've talked about that here numerous times always to deaf ears. I understand what I did and that it's no different from what everbody here does.
The experience of emotional trauma for years which is the only qualification for caregiving rips through the layers of our self perceptions making it almost self evident that those same, lifelong developed, self perceptions will not see us through. We will get through it since almost no one dies from caregiving but sooner or later we come to the same place which is a new life that must be undertaken and will be undertaken regardless.
But strength and willingness which actually work in real life only come from the thing I got in trouble for saying on this board. Letting go and moving on into the reality we end up in anyway. I have grieved for almost eight years since the single hardest day of Alzheimer's which is the night I scoured the internet and learned the dreadful reality that had our names on it, was completely without hope of any kind, and would always end up exactly here.
I'm still getting calls to see how I am because I must be grieving. I understand that. They are grieving so I must be. It's the shallow pool Alzheimer's pushed me out of. No. I wasn't lying this whole time. Talking about hopes while actually clinging to the past and my own fears and unwillingness. I did but that was years ago. It was precisely clinging to the shreds being ripped away by the tornado that was the terror.
Depression is a clinically bad condition which must be overcome somewhere to reclaim normality in spirit and breaking that condition isn't at the top of the things that I dedicated myself to. I see no way of saying I value life if by life I mean spending it in the propeller wash of the past. That was a painfully scary time when I could see that I not only was a stranger in my own body, had no emotional connection to events, couldn't tell what month it was, and saw an old man in my own body when I looked in a mirror.
I was so fortunate to have the decidedly strange experience that July 2012 afternoon, and being in a safe place at the cottage my best friend owns which I've known most of my life when I suddenly felt like myself for a moment and by that moment saw everything click into place. I WAS right. I couldn't tell how screwed up I was but realized it had to be the case and so treated myself as an invalid almost - and when I DID feel like me, it proved that nothing about my existence then was true. The only truth is my life had become so horrible, my sensiblities had checked out and only stayed for a moment because it wasn't safe yet to move back in.
I have no problem admitting that this post and others to come are meant to show those that were adamant a cannonball was going to hit me when Dianne died are wrong or that I'm being childish about that. I understand what's actually at stake. Many here commented kindly recently that they actually read what I say. I am not a writer and while I'm as vainglorious as the next person, I know my hand is just a tool. It's the same in painting. It was the same in the jobs. Any good that comes out only comes out when I'm not in the way.
I know why too. Which is that no one knows why. I've studied this quite deeply over the decades. Reading books about how these things really happened and it's always the same. Either the person is so enveloped in themselves they believe it all comes from them though no one can describe how in detail. Or the truth is said, which is that everyone everywhere who's ever done anything notworthy knows they were just the pen at that time and everything that came out, just came out. Arthur Koestler's Act Of Creation is an example.
Anything clever I might say falls in the same category as my admiration for you (and me) in what we are all doing by being here. The club nobody wants to join populated by my family, the gathering of sufferers as some might deem, the unfortunate in life some might think - and while all that is true, it doesn't describe or approach describing the group that is here.
We all read the variety in the experiences we all have. The differences in our makeups and our outlooks. The twisted knots of our relationships and our life experience. The incredible variation in the disease.
But we almost never say the truth of what all that means as a summation. The gathering of those who give at great cost to themselves because it's what they believe. It is here on this board that the actual ugliness of self perception stands out in sharp relief. If only we could give a part of what we give and gave them to ourselves with equal seriousness. That however is not how we treat ourselves. And that is pathos.
Wolf, actually there is a high incidence of caregivers dying before the one they are caring for. Caregiving is not for wimps…and it absolutely can do you in.
Now I'm going to be bossy and obnoxious and tell you that you should follow your own advice, which I agree with: You must take care of yourself, just as you took care of Dianne.