Caregiving Village

 There are people you want in your caregiving village, and those you don't want because they don't want to be there.  The people you want are those who can hear you, who can sit with you when you tell them of your grief.

The people you don't want are those who can't sit with your pain.  Those who want to dismiss it, to say things that help them not be involved, that help them not deal with their own mortality, their own chance of getting "it."  People who say things like, "Well, at least . . ." any fucking thing.  At least he's not . . .  Those are things the caregiver can say, but not a friend or supporter.  Not anyone on the outside of the journey. 

People on the outside of the journey don't know shit about the journey.  Their job is to support you, sit with you, or be outside the village.  Don't invest time in people outside the village, on people who can't walk with you part of the way on your pilgrimage to widowhood.

Ah, is it a village or a journey?  My metaphors as mixed up as I am.

It has been said by people misquoting John Gardner that there are only two plots: A person goes on a journey and a stranger comes to town.  I've been experiencing the interior version of both of those plots.  I've been on a journey of the heart as a stranger has entered my home: my relationship with my spouse.

Photo by Christian Stamati on Unsplash

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Is he dreaming?

 During all the time he spends in bed? 

What dreams may come?  Will there be a big transition or will it be more like slip-sliding away?  

He has slept almost twenty hours a day the past five days.  I think his speech centers are seriously effected now.  He's he's really mixing up words and losing them.  Sometimes I can't figure out what point he's trying to forcefully make.  And he waves his hands side to side, up and down, pushing out, pulling in.  I have no idea what these gestures, sometimes too forced, mean.

"How did you find me?"

 

I'm doing my homework in front of the television -- an ancient practice going back to the Dick Van Dyke Show days.  I'm watching The Falcon's Brother, a 1942 episode of a movie series starring George Sanders with the wonderful radio actor Tom Conway as his brother.  Will used to say that watching black and white movies was soothing and healing.  I find it so.  I love how full of wartime rules and regulations it is.  There is a scene in a fashion house where the woman describing the dresses kept reminding the ladies (and detective) in the room that each of the dresses followed government wartime regulations.

A long preface to a short report of a conversation we had last night.

I'd finished an episode of Murder She Wrote, did my evening tasks, then moved the little dog off my pillow and got into bed.  The motion activated lights went off.  I started settling in with an episode of Suspense in an earbud, when Will rolled over toward me, put a hand on me and asked, tentatively, "Who are you?" 

"I'm your wife.  I love you.  We all love you, the dogs and I."

There was a pause.  I put my earbud back in.  A short time later he said, "How did you find me"

I took my earbud out again.  "How did I find you where?"

"I don't know."

Long pause in the dark.

"How did you find me?"

"Where are you now?

"I don't know."

Long pause in the dark.  Little dog keeps trying to settle.  Under my hand or at my feet?

"How did you find me?"

"Do you feel anxious?"

"No.  How did you find me?"

We lie in the dark, together, touching.  I am full of chocolate and ThC, though not terribly high.  I have been building my levels of both tolerance and acceptance since he forgot who I was in February.  Since then, he'd remembered me for most of the past few months.  So I feel only moderately sad and not surprised.  And I'm curious about why he thinks I "found him."

"Were you lost?" I ask.

"I don't know."

Long pause in the dark.

"How did you find me?"

"I will always find you.  I will always find you and always love you.  You are safe.  I hope you have a good sleep.  Goodnight, Sweetie."

And I'm asleep before I hear the surprise ending of Suspense.

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Surprise ending:  This morning I asked him if he knew who I was and he said, "Kakie!" rather happily.  And then he also named off Winston and Birdy.  So.  How does his brain work?  

Well, here's a picture of a brain with vascular dementia and a story attached.

But day to day, I don't know where we're at...it's all in the moment.