Tears fall silently on my pillow; I choke back the sobs. This man lying beside me sleeping peacefully; Unaware of my utter despair. You promised me thirty three more years. Stay with me my love; I am not ready. I am frightened of the grim time ahead. This thief called dementia Robs my love of our precious memories. How long will you remember our times together? How long will you see me? Why do they call it Sundowners Which sounds wonderful and idyllic; not a robber of our sweet evenings together. But I will take them just to be with you. My friend, my lover, my confidant, my everything. You have given me the best years of my life. I will give to you my patience, my kindness and my unswerving love. I will gently guide you and walk with you. I will laugh with you, cry with you, and pray with you. For better for worse. For richer for poorer In sickness and health Bound together by this thing called love For thirty three more years;.
Altho my wife has been "gone" over 7 years the pain seems to get worse each day,favorite songs bring tears,memories bring tears,just thoughts bring tears and Deborah your poem also brings tears,they say crying is healthy for you I would beg to defer,thank you Deborah,I couldn't have said it better
Well said, Deborah. I think about happy young couples getting married in beautiful weddings and saying those words: "For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health"...and not yet having a clue what they're really promising...what those words could really mean. For us, the Alzheimer's caregiving spouses, those words...those vows... take on a grim and gritty reality.
Sad thing with young couples, way too many don't even mean their vows or as said have no idea what they mean. When the going gets tough they just divorce and move on. Or, they don't even get married so there is not a deep commitment.
I notice older couples together more now. I want to cry because we will never have that time we so looked forward to. I envy them.
Thanks for sharing your poem Debby. I just went through my first anniversary without my hb and those thoughts keep going through my head.
Ol Don - thank you also for sharing. I’ve been frustrated with so much crying and sometimes sobbing. Keep feeling like I’m really weird cause I don’t know anyone else who cries so much. It is getting somewhat better, but still.... memories everywhere I look. But I don’t want to be without those memories either.
From “Grief Day by Day” by Jan Warner. “Why would I stop mourning a person who had been so central to every part of my life? I didn’t need to let go to move forward. I needed help in finding a home within myself for my grief.”
“It is good when a memory brings warmth, and, for a moment, doesn’t tear us apart.”
From my local paper on Survivor’s Guilt “Grief is a process of trying to wrap your mind around something in a way you can live with and when people get bogged down, they’ve arrived at a meaning that they can’t live with.”
I’m struggling with that meaning. I miss him so much, except when I remember the times he was trying to kill or hurt me. I took him to Adult day care to give myself a break from those terrors, but they wanted him medicated to control that angry behavior. For four months the meds made life so much better. But I think it’s the drugs that killed him. I remember reading the side effects and thinking Whoa.., but then, with Alzheimer’s, maybe it doesn’t matter. Well it does matter. Everywhere I turn there are dichotomies like that.