Tag Archives: dementia

Part 294:→Husband Journey: Somebody That I Used to Know

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Well, dear friends we’ve been on some journey. A journey of years with surprises and twists and convolutions and paradoxes and disbelief. And let’s not forget the sprinkling of Covid for good luck, just to kick things up a notch. I left you before Christmas and continued to slog on into a world of darkened, short days, hoping for Spring, and while we’re at it, hoping for miracles, for, after all, ’tis the season. Hope. Miracles. Them’s fighting words. Strong stuff. Magical stuff, control stuff. So, let’s move into January and all that hoopla of a new year. More hope. … Continue reading →

Part 293: →Husband Journey: And Then He Kissed Me

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  Here we are, back at the nursing home: I begin the ascent to the third floor with a pit-stop at the rehab department. I am looking for someone from the speech department and share my alarm at the recent observation that Robert’s frequency and quality of responses are waning. I share my view with a combination of realization and didactic condescension as this is “my field” of expertise and what could these young people know? I approach with sadness, I approach with urgency and I approach with questions. I am told I will get a call-back. As usual I … Continue reading →

Part 292: →Husband Journey: The Great Pretender

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The bonsai was a gift from my sister in November 2022. It was doing well: the instructions said to keep it moist, to provide a tray of wet pebbles underneath for humidity, to feed it. It produced two small, fragrant gardenias in the spring and then carried on looking green and gorgeous until this past November when it spontaneously, mid-month, began to droop; its leaves sagging, eventually drying, then dropping. I frantically did research and have been stuck between grief and hope. I removed it from the pot that it was wired into. No, it wasn’t potbound, no the roots … Continue reading →

Part 291: Husband Journey: Has Orvieto Been Lost?

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We had lunch and we went. My son, my husband’s dearest friend from second grade, and I. Am I recovered? Enough, I guess to make my way back out into society and to a nursing home, where Robert has been living for almost three years. As long as I swallow hard and make myself numb, I am OK. Until I walk into the room and see a person in a bed who I don’t recognize. We usually visit in the late afternoon between the time the patients are being tended to and served dinner. Perhaps it is not the best … Continue reading →

Part 290. Husband Journey: 47th Anniversary in a Nursing Home

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      I had not seen Robert in-person in months. Possibly not since last summer? Last fall? There were surgeries. A wedding. Fear of Covid. Life changes. We visited more via FaceTime where I could show him around the house and hope to tweak his memory. And then on March 2, 2023 after months of stress and worry, I had a mastectomy. Another mastectomy; after nineteen years. I am still recovering from complications three months later. I was determined to visit in person on our anniversary. It was forty-seven years ago that we married. We worked. We had a … Continue reading →

Part 288. Husband Journey: I am a Cartoon Living in a Pixelated World

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1/24/23 I began my day, as many of my days are started with acute anxiety. I know all of the tricks to help it dissipate–to an extent– but the thought of a big surgery coming up in about a month, becomes overwhelming. Meditation and visualization pick at the mountain of fear. People tell me to call them and I want to but as it turns out most times, I can’t move or if I do call,  they are not home. Deep breaths. I try to reconstruct myself, like I am made of Legos, snapping the pieces together, so that I … Continue reading →

282→Husband Journey: Dreams to Remember

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August has been speeding up and despite my protests, much of it is gone, pushing me to Fall. I keep busy. I distract myself. There is plenty to think about and plenty I do not want to face. I am having a biopsy under MRI this week for something suspicious that appeared on a recent MRI. The MRI is the new annual protocol for breast cancer people. Like I said, I don’t want to think about that for now, so, let me report on my last Facetime visit with Robert. By the time you read this I will have had … Continue reading →

281→Husband Journey: It’s Automatic

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Over the last few weeks I have been speaking to Robert via FaceTime calls. It takes the stress off of me: I don’t have to sit in a hot car and take a Covid test before entering the nursing home, and, in addition, I have a houseful of stuff with which to stimulate his brain. I am finding that since the stents were inserted to open clogged arteries, he seems to be more alert. When I get a Facetime call from the nursing home, I greet Robert, wait for the din around him to die down and begin, or try … Continue reading →

280→Husband Journey: A Garden of Memories

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Photos of the garden. I take Robert on FaceTime “trips.”   I’ve been lax and lazy. I took no notes on several interactions with Robert. I don’t recall all the things he said. Maybe just the affiliated mood. I am contacted more regularly for a Facetime call and I am finding it very helpful: I can walk around the house and pull out props to stimulate his memory. I “take” him to the garden, have him greet the tomatoes, let him silently marvel at the flowers and at how tall the Krauter Vesuvius Plum Tree has gotten. I go out. … Continue reading →

278→Husband Journey: Life Goes On

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I took this photo last year and it is part of my apple watch slideshow display: Everytime I raise my hand there is a new flower glowing in the light, changing in front of me, right on my wrist. It reminds me that the living need to be focused on, that things are happening that require attention, that life goes on. We visited Robert the other day, as Father’s Day may not be an option for a visit. Robert doesn’t mark time or the days. i suspect that “time” is one long continuum and he has forgotten when it began. … Continue reading →

276→Husband Journey: Memorial Day

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Memorial Day May 30, 2022   It is a day of gratitude, of looking back, of memorializing. This day, forty-six years ago, Robert and I married. It was the second marriage for each of us: I was a widow, yes, at age twenty-six. He was divorced. It just happened that the Universe threw us together and there we were embarking on a new life, together. It turned out to be a life well-lived, filled with all New York City could offer. Filled with all the world could offer. Travel, exploration, good food, always good food. A great son. It went … Continue reading →

271→Husband Journey: Get a Grip

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  After about a two month hiatus, Evan and I visited Robert. The CDC rules in effect, which facilities are driven by, mandates a quick Covid test, so, for about twenty minutes, until we figured out the logistics as every test is a bit different, we stood in a drafty entryway with our tests propped up on a rolling platform, and helped a Cambodian lady nearby, follow the directions. And then, upstairs with the social worker, whom we bumped into. Now to the third floor. “Robert, Robert there are some people here to see you!” The room was on the … Continue reading →

269→Husband Journey: Again

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Just thinking that this is a part of the journey, the story that remains an enigma and cannot be explained. It is the story that challenges the shadow belief that we have control. Robert contracted Covid. Again. Remember, he had it less than a year ago. He’s had two J&J vaxes. A visitor to his roommate brought it in. That ticks me off. The guidelines were so loosened by the CDC that it was, in my book, irresponsible and now the rules have been rolled back to allow visitation for people who have tested negative within twenty-four hours. I finally … Continue reading →

268→Husband Journey: Save

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This post took me more than two days and several drafts. In the middle of the night, or in the shower, in some passive moment when I am not really thinking of anything, obviously deep down there, I am: I wait, then it unfolds. So, today’s blog is about saving. Or about being saved.  Robert, on a Facetime call: “Hello, Snooks,” he  said. I mentioned something about his head. He said, “that’s the important part of me.” I heard a man in his room. An aide was helping his roommate. I could see Robert’s eyes darting, tracking left to right. … Continue reading →

267→Husband Journey: Now, All You Have To Deal With …

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  12/17/21 A visit to Robert. A cyst was found on Robert’s thyroid, that is why the on-site physician wanted to send him to an endocrinologist. I left messages to speak to this physician and we never connected. I canceled the appointment that they told me they had made, and told Rocky, the nurse, that I would not consent unless the doctor spoke with me and unless I had an inkling as to whether Robert’s current condition could possibly improve if he were treated. Which would probably mean surgery. Which could in his case conceivably kill him. The first and … Continue reading →

266→Husband Journey: Solos

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Morgan Freeman in “Solos”   It’s happening more and more. I look at this blank blog page and don’t know where to go with it. So, I fall into my usual stream of consciousness and let ‘er rip. Sometimes I feel like I am getting there; to a manageable place where I can get up in the morning and face another day, head-on, in my new life. Other days I feel broken. I am. There is no denying that the kicking and screaming part of the mourning process is hard, damn hard. It’s uncomfortable, nauseating, fear-based, horrifying and dreadful. I … Continue reading →

242. →Husband Journey: Bread and Brain

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    How does one divert oneself when life is tough? Dive into learning a new skill or resurrect an old skill. Focus, yes it is difficult, on something other than the pain that drags you down and makes your stomach quake. Think of pita, ciabatta, loaves  of warmth; some of which might take more than a day to prepare and bake. That keeps you busy. I have been consumed by a recent food section of The New York Times. I bought a bread baking book. I put my hands in flour and wish it was Moroccan sand or a … Continue reading →

239.→Husband Journey: Cinéma Vérité

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  Robert and I had an intellectual and artistic connection that brought us to the movies and the theater. We pretty much shunned Hollywood and stuck to the avant-garde, the independent, the thought-provoking. He loved going to the Malverne Theater on Long Island to catch the latest and greatest. The parking was easier there than fighting to survive in Queensat  the sister theater in Kew Gardens. The last time we went was well before Covid and he was able to walk from the parking lot to the theater with a cane. We’d first have lunch at the little diner next … Continue reading →