Honoring The Time to Heal
About ten years ago, my mother in law, Kathleen was diagnosed with white matter disease which impacts the functionality of the brain and connectivity to the nervous system. With time, this brain disease increases risk for stroke, Dementia and Alzheimer’s among a slew of other ailments. In Kathleen’s case, it was Alzheimer’s. At first, the progression seemed moderate. Some days Kathleen was content to be home sitting on the front porch for hours and other days, she cried herself to sleep. The things she once enjoyed like knitting and sewing became too difficult to do. Even cooking, something she had done her whole life, became an impossible task because she couldn’t remember what to do in the kitchen. A lost word here and there became many words, followed by sentences until silence took over.
Hiring a full time caregiver was immanent to her well-being and to my father-in-law, Paddy. We started to feel uneasy about having Kathleen and Paddy home on their own. Agreeing we needed help was the easy part compared to the stacks of forms needed to be filled out (thank God for my sister-in-law Catherine who handled that), dealing with multiple agencies to find the right care and placement and finally the slew of caregivers that rotated in and out of the house every four hours for their respective shift. And those were the good days. The bad days ranged from caregivers not showing up at all to dealing with under-qualified aides or aides that lacked any compassion or tenderness toward an elderly woman that couldn’t speak.
For those dealing with elderly parents or grandparents suffering with any form of memory loss, you know how gut wrenching it is to watch a loved one slip into another world beyond reach and beyond connection. For the spouse of the person living with any chronic or crippling or life threatening illness, the heartbreak is amplified by a million.
The cruelty and unfairness of Alzheimer’s took over every aspect of our life, especially Paddy’s.
With time, slight shifts in Kathleen’s behavior became markers in her decline and while we mentally and emotionally prepared for it, we weren’t prepared for Paddy’s health to take a turn for the worse. We underestimated the toll of stress on his emotional and mental well-being. And yet we remained optimistic that once a full time aide was in place, his spirits would lift and he would find happiness again.
Fast forward to a few years later on December 17, 2017 the morning after our daughter’s 7th birthday, Paddy fell in his house and hit his head on the wall marking the beginning of a downward spiral that we never saw coming.
Some days, I still struggle with accepting his passing. We had such tremendous hope that once a full time aide was secured for Kathleen, Paddy would get a new lease on life. We imagined him golfing with his buddies without worry, enjoying his family that surrounded him and embracing life the way he once did.
Explaining his death to our young kids was heartbreaking especially as we struggled to accept it ourselves. This was the first death they experienced and they asked a lot of questions about death and heaven and we explained as best we could in a way that made sense for their young minds to comprehend. They didn’t understand why God took him without permission or why they couldn’t visit whenever they wanted. It breaks my heart all over again to think back on that time.
We spent countless nights snuggled in their beds, sometimes talking and other times just holding them until they fell asleep. With time, we thought their sadness leveled and they found acceptance with our new normal without their Granda. But their sadness didn’t lessen, it merely manifested into other behaviors that we didn’t immediately associate with grief.
Our son began to fear all forms of change. Even the simplest of things worried him. Switching his closet from winter clothes to summer ones upset him. He wanted everything to stay exactly the same. He associated change with unwanted life events and loss. He cried himself to sleep fearing getting older.
Our daughter’s grief manifested in the form of anger and defiance at school and at home. She lashed out often and cried over everything, even things that didn’t warrant an emotional reaction let alone a full-blown meltdown.
Brian and I went back and forth on what to do and eventually, we decided to seek the counsel of a therapist to help our kids cope with grief. It was the best decision we made, especially for our daughter who had internalized her sadness and didn’t know how to express it other than to be angry and cry at the drop of a hat. Someone outside of us encouraging her to openly be sad and talk about loss was a turning point and within a few visits, we had our daughter back. Our son is less resistant to change and he’s even noting good things happening as a result of change.
This experience taught me a valuable lesson that I’ll never forget and that is to slow down and give each experience its due time for processing, healing and closure. In our effort to create a new normal for our kids, we didn’t honor the time we needed to deal with our own grief. Our children’s resistance to accepting loss forced us to slow down and deal with our own feelings that we de-prioritized out of protection for them.
The last year and half tested us on every level imaginable but it didn’t break us. Looking back, I can’t help but feel blessed that because of the rough season we’ve endured, we’re able to fully appreciate and value the present moment. We humbly accepted our shortcomings, grew as individuals and as a family and it made us stronger and more grounded in the things that matter.
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