Hi There, I'm Back

Thanks to Dreamer for posting when I was in the middle, most intense part of caregiving.  You are a gem!

Readers,
I'm sorry I've been gone from here for so long.  I've missed you and I have so much to share with you.

Here's what's on my mind tonight.

You can do all the right things, you make the best decisions possible for your loved one.  Logic and reason and budget and effort dictate and you do your very best, all you can.  And you can still feel like a skillet of scrambled eggs emotionally.  Still feel awful, still doubt yourself.

The things we don't talk about are the things that haunt us.  The feelings we have after the decisions and the logistics.  The fundamental four year old child sense of how incredibly unfair this disease is, the sense of helplessness and betrayal, even though I have done my best and exhausted myself doing it.  I feel like my mom is ripped away from me and I can do nothing.  She wants to go home and no longer has any idea of what that is.  She's sometime inconsolable and nothing I do helps, not for more than 20 minutes maybe...on a good day.

She misses my dad (he's coming home after work according to mom), thinks her kids are young enough that they shouldn't be home by themselves and thinks we still live in northeast Detroit.  Her house is not her house, it's mine and I'm the great friend neighbor across the street; somehow still her daughter.

I feel helpless, like I've abandoned her (and I know I have not).  I feel crappy.  My inner four year old is so offended at the injustice, loss of dignity, loss of her sense of self, loss of her self worth, just all the damned loss  and humiliation and embarrassment.  I have done my best yet it doesn't feel like enough, not now.

I'm struggling with all of this, working though it.  It's alright to say that aloud. My heart has been shredded by this disease and sewn back together with love and I'm stronger in all my broken places.  I've never known this much love before, nor how strong I really am until strong is the only choice I've had.

There is more room in a broken heart.

Love Always,
Voyageur