Four months

Quilting brings calm

It has been four months since Mom died. I find myself feeling I should call her, I should be going to the AL to see her. By that I mean that I feel guilty that I’m not doing those things any more. It’s not exactly that I miss doing them- it wasn’t as if mom was capable ( for several years) of being someone to carry on a rousing conversation with or a game of cards etc. I don’t know if that makes any sense or not.

I’m still trying to get her ‘estate’ settled. Once taxes are filed and the refund received, then I need to get a small estate affidavit signed. There are a couple of tiny refund checks and an account I can’t close without one. No idea what the tax refund will be payable to.

We moved, and are trying to settle in. Haven’t got the old house on the market yet. So staying busy with that. And oh yes, we are on our mid-sixties and having some health issues of our own. Golden years ….

How are the rest of you stage 8 members?

bether00

I know what you mean about thinking to visit. My mom died a month ago. I went back to work recently and almost drove to her home afterwards. The moments I’m on autopilot, and forget she’s gone really sting. I filled an extension for her taxes this week. I didn’t realize that all the poa work means nothing when someone passes away. I’m still just very tired and sad a lot. I have to pick up her ashes and no where seems right to keep them before we release them as a family.

Golden years don't always seem so golden. My mom was suppose to enjoy her retirement, so sad after working so hard for so many years to have so few.

Thanks for asking! Hang in there.

fmb

Thank you for checking on us in Stage 8.

Since DH died January 21, I have been back a couple of times to visit the ALF where he lived. The last time was to give little thank-you gifts to members of his hospice team who had become like family to me. I don't know if I'll go back there again. Our paths have diverged, and despite the pain, I think it is time for me to walk my own path without them. When I visited this last time, I walked past DH's old room. It was jarring to see someone else's name on the door. That was our home for 14 mos. I feel lost without the routine of visiting him.

I'm packing to move to an apartment and finding it hard to go through our belongings. DH owned a large oil reproduction of a famous painting. He had owned it for years and told me he wanted me to keep it after he was gone. It wasn't valuable, I have no place in the new apartment to hang it, and I never really liked it anyway. After a long argument with myself, I finally donated it to a local charity thrift store. And I feel so guilty for doing so. It's like he's slowly disappearing from my life.

I'm having the most trouble dealing with my mother's death on March 7. Because I was still reeling from DH's death, my brother decided to delay my mother's out-of-state funeral until after Easter. Neither of my siblings are practicing Catholics, so I was given the task of selecting the music for the funeral mass. I spent most of Tuesday listening to hymns on youtube and crying. I'm looking forward to the trip with mixed feelings and hoping I can hold it together long enough to get through everything.

I never wanted my mother so much as when DH died, but she was too far gone in dementia to even know who I was. And I've never needed DH so much as now that she is gone. I feel completely unmoored and adrift. It doesn't help that my 65th birthday is coming up, and I am having some health problems, probably stress-related. Although I knew both of their deaths were coming, I am simply overwhelmed.

GothicGremlin

I'm doing —- better. I think it's because I've just passed the one year mark (oddly). I was fairly reflective on the one year date of Peggy's death, and the one year date of her funeral, which was earlier this month. I really have a hard time believing it's been a year. I'm not completely healed, and I don't know that I ever will be. I think there will be scars. Sometimes a bit of left over bureaucracy will demotivate and paralyze me, almost like burnout. And then I deal and move on. I feel like I'm making progress.

@Quilting brings calm I know the feeling of thinking I should call Peggy or go visit her, and then I realize that I can't. I think settling your mom's estate will help a lot. I know it did for me. Just today I got the paper copy of Peggy's final taxes in the mail. On one hand, yay, on the other hand …. this was the last thing I needed to do for her, and now it's done.

@bether00 - I hear you. Having Peggy's ashes really got to me as well.

@fmb - you're a lot braver than I am. There is no way I could have walked past Peggy's door in memory care and see another name there. Nope, I can't do it. I also stopped by once to drop off some thank-yous to the caregivers, but I only stayed in the lobby/activity room area. I stayed far away from the hall and the bedrooms. There are some amazing caregivers at Peggy's memory care facility, but I'm never going back there again.

I completely understand why you're so overwhelmed. You have so much on your plate. One of the things that really helped me was to go outside and take walks. Do you have an arboretum anywhere near you? Walking along some paths with lots of trees and flowers might help.

Another thing that helped me was to gather all of the notes I took from doctors, memory care, etc., plus my own journal entries and put them together into a chronology. Maybe it sounds weird, but it helped me to make sense of the timeline, and it gave me some insights that I couldn't see when I was down in it.

I'm not great at meditation but I know that it helps a lot of people.

fmb

@GothicGremlin It's good to hear you are doing better. No, we won't ever completely heal; we just adapt and grow around the hole in our heart.

Walking is how I process things and is very important to me. I am blessed to have a nice walking trail about a mile from my current house, and try to get there every chance I get. Unfortunately we're having a rather wet Spring this year, and I haven't been able to get there much. I'm already looking for a new trail near my apartment.

Not two weeks after DH died, I was forced to create a chronology of DH's illness. This was extremely difficult and painful. DH's daughters are causing legal trouble over the direct beneficiary designations on his investments, as I knew they would. He left the bulk of his investments to me to provide for me the rest of my life (no pension provision for me; retired federal civil service so no SS for me to collect). There are no assets to probate, so I had to show when all beneficiary changes were made. The illness timeline was to prove that the changes were made prior to his stroke and subsequent Alzheimer's diagnosis. In addition to money, they demanded the military burial flag that was presented to me as his widow. I reluctantly turned it over to my attorney in the hope that they will be at least partially appeased (I doubt it).

So while I am overwhelmed, I am feeling some hope. The legal problems are still a wildcard. My mother's out-of-state funeral is next week. The moving van comes in early May, and I will have everything out of my mobile home by the end of May (giving away anything I can, since it will be torn down). After that, my life should calm down quite a lot. Of course, I am aware that the grief that has been buried under all of the busyness, stress and anxiety will once again rear it's ugly head.

TrumpetSwan

Thank you for touching base. I reached Stage 8 with dad seven months ago. I am finding my equilibrium on a more frequent basis, so I'll take that as progress.

For a long time, I would be running an errand and see something I needed to pick up for him or look for something he could use. It was a habit that had become part of my life. I missed it when it was gone, and it left noticeable open space.

I still have mom in Memory Care, so Stage 8 for my last parent remains ahead.

The best I think I can hope for in Stage 8 is to let go of how I would have preferred my dad's final days to play out. Unfortunately, his wife was more advanced in dementia than he was, so his wife was unable to be the primary caregiver in the end. She was unable to calmly hold his hand and reassure him that we would all be OK. He left this world being worried about her. He was unable to die in his own bed in the home they shared the last 25 years. Instead, he was in an ALF he never wanted surrounded by paid staff.

Letting go of the things I was unable to change and building a future of happiness is what I am aiming for.

tigersmom

DH left this world six and a half months ago, and i am still struggling. Some days are better than others. On the bad ones, i keep replaying the seven weeks that hurtled him from strong and ambulatory to mute and broken, and then gone forever. I figure he spent about six weeks in stage six, though i know it was longer, and one week in stage seven. He was in memory care for four weeks, and on hospice for one. The speed with which it all fell apart was breathtaking. On better days, i can remember the happier times of our life together, and even the early days after diagnosis that were not so bad. I am not sorry for him that he is gone; at the end, he was truly suffering. But i am sorry for me, and for us. Mostly, i just miss him so much. After going through more than three years of anticipatory grief, it did not occur to me that the real, final, forever grief would be so much worse. Thank you for asking, QBC.