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Life After Caregiving: Finding Your New Normal
With my eyes still closed, the sleep fog begins to lift and the fact that it’s Saturday creeps into my awareness. Saturdays are the days I make the three-hour drive to visit my 81 year-old mother in the skilled nursing facility that she now makes her home. The fog lifts a little more and I now remember that my mom passed two weeks ago and I don’t have to make the journey today. I never have to make that journey again. Now, another kind of fog moves in. The fog of grief. Since I don’t have to get up, get dressed and hit the road today, I stay in bed – hoping that sleep will visit me again. Thankfully, it does for another two hours. I finally get up and move to the couch in the living room. I turn on the TV and watch show after show. During each one I tell myself ,“I’ll get in the shower when this episode is over.” I don’t. I find myself sobbing – ugly crying. I made the journey to visit my mom on Saturdays for three years. In fact, I had been my mom’s care partner for 22 years. She was only 59 years old when she had the massive stroke. I was only 19. I lost a part of my mom back then, but I still had the essence of ‘the loving mom’ I had known for 19 years. Now she was ‘gone-gone’, not just a part of her. Here’s the thing: I didn’t just lose my mom, I lost the person I had been caring for all those years. It was like I lost two people at the same time. It was a double whammy. My biggest surprise? The deep sadness I felt. I thought I was ready for her to go; and a part of me was ready. The rest of me, though, wasn’t and I wasn’t prepared for that. Even though she was gone, I still loved her. Thank goodness for my job. While I had a hard time doing anything on the weekends, my job gave me a reason to get up during the week. I threw myself into a new project and would work seven days a week for 10 or more hours a day. While it helped get me through the days, it didn’t help me deal with the loss. The sadness didn’t go away, it stayed just under the surface. People suggested I get grief counseling. As silly as it may sound, I imagined I was like Humpty Dumpty. What if I started to talk about it and crumbled into a thousand pieces and wouldn’t be able to put the pieces together again? Eventually, I went to counseling and during one session, I suddenly felt lightheaded. I felt “light.” I realized I had been carrying the weight of grief for so long and I now could feel that it was lifting. I wish I had listened and gotten help sooner. Here is what I learned by this experience:
- Grief, sadness, loss, anger, and guilt are normal feelings when someone passes. Allow yourself to feel your feelings and grieve.
- There is no set timeline for grief. Everybody’s journey is personal and individual to them.
- Grief is something you have to move through and you can’t go on with your life until you do. You can’t go around.
- You might feel alone, you are NOT. Let people help you. Tell them what you need and don’t need. Let them know when you’re ready to join the world again.
- If it is appropriate, get professional help through a support group or counseling.
- If you are employed, talk to your boss and let him or her know what you need, whether that is to lighten your load or to dive into a project.
- Keep a journal; it helps sort out emotions.
- Love doesn’t end when a person passes. Love is truly forever.
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