Helpful Insights

From an email to friends earlier this month:

      In the midst of all this, I've been trying to "deal with" myself and my feelings, and I have not been very happy with who I see.  I think I have begun to realize, though, that my impatience, frustration and anger are really masks for my grief and sorrow which are so much harder to face.  I've been re-reading a book I read a couple of years ago (Ten Thousand Joys and Ten Thousand Sorrows) by the spouse and caregiver of an Alzheimer's patient.  Early in that book, she writes:  "I felt a surge of impatience, then realized that the problem wasn't a need to hurry but my own grief at his growing disability.  Impatience was easier to deal with than feeling the depth of my grief."   The other night I came across this paragraph about half-way through the book:  "Amazingly, the truth was that even with all the signs--this relentless process of deterioration--some part of me still clung to the sense that under the confusion he was still well, that somehow he might even bounce back.  My mind automatically bargained: maybe this was just a temporary state of affairs.  He seemed so healthy in every other way.  How challenging to accept that this process was final, headed inexorably toward loss of mind, loss of communication, eventually death.  Much to ponder.  Much to open to.  Much to accept."  This paragraph really struck me because I had been pondering for a few weeks now whether I have yet arrived at a place of acceptance or was still (after 5+ years!) somehow meandering around in a place of denial.  That's why her words really reached me; it seemed that if she could have been in so much denial that it was possibly where I have been, too.  And then we got hit this week by Alzheimer's jumping out at us from every corner and in every minute of every day; it made it hard to deny though still very unwelcome!

     My hope is that now that I've recognized the ongoing denial I've been living in about Bob, perhaps acceptance will have a gentling effect and help strengthen the patience I long for, and lessen the frustration and anger.  As the writer of the book referenced above said, "this is the final chapter of your relationship."  I want that chapter to be for us as she describes is possible when she writes: "'Your loving doesn't know its majesty until it knows its helplessness,' Rumi wrote.  Some people may think that is a depressing statement, but upon reflection it becomes arresting and inspiring.  It acknowledges the fact--especially true in old age--that we become increasingly helpless. Fighting that reality causes suffering; acceptance of it frees us.  Although seemingly paradoxical, when we accept that we are helpless to change the realities of living with dementia--or loss of any kind--we may gradually discover the deepest sources of our loving.  For love enables us to handle the greatest challenges that life presents."