Lessons of life's ups and downs
I read about people feeling as though they're walking on eggshells when dealing with dementia but that to me assumes that the things you do in advance will make a difference when actually that isn't always true (sometimes it is but not always). Instead you need to go with the flow and learn from everything. Yesterday I realised that after 36 years Ash is no longer comfortable eating outside in an evening or even sitting out in the garden afterwards. This took my breath away for a while as he's always been the one to say that it's too nice to spend time indoors however we still have conversations in the evening albeit centred around answers to questions in the quiz shows he likes to watch so I've decided to enjoy the garden in the day time and join him in front of the television later on. I wrote a very long piece about this to start with but then I decided you didn't need the detail just the facts. What I did find interesting was that just by putting it all down I was able to let go of the sense of losing something special and move on. I've never been able to write a diary, my brain works so much faster than any pen that I make mistakes, have to cross things out and it all looks such a mess. This however means I can put feelings down on paper to get them out into the open and then delete them. I recommend it.
Following on with learning from things, for the second morning running Ash has woken before me and then laid next to me stressing about getting up in case he wakes me. Luckily I've woken in time as, if he goes downstairs first, he can't remember what day it is, what's happening or why he's in the kitchen and not me so the day gets off to a bad start. What have I learnt from this? To set the alarm for 7am whether we need to get up or not. This by the way has moved on from not setting the alarm as he was anxious about being hurried so another important lesson is that in any life nothing stays the same and you have to work at it all to keep up.
The third lesson has come from the realisation that, just because we'd had the problem of him waking before me for the second morning in a row, that particular source of stress didn't affect the rest of the morning and we were actually able to have a conversation about the impending visit to my mum. What did I learn there? That things rarely pan out as I expect them to and so I shouldn't necessarily expect the worst.
As I've said before, if I can see this as a series of difficulties to overcome rather than one huge problem that I can't see any end to I have hopes that I will survive sanity intact.
www.facebook.com/groups/1990374111022679/
memoryfortwo@gmail.com
Following on with learning from things, for the second morning running Ash has woken before me and then laid next to me stressing about getting up in case he wakes me. Luckily I've woken in time as, if he goes downstairs first, he can't remember what day it is, what's happening or why he's in the kitchen and not me so the day gets off to a bad start. What have I learnt from this? To set the alarm for 7am whether we need to get up or not. This by the way has moved on from not setting the alarm as he was anxious about being hurried so another important lesson is that in any life nothing stays the same and you have to work at it all to keep up.
The third lesson has come from the realisation that, just because we'd had the problem of him waking before me for the second morning in a row, that particular source of stress didn't affect the rest of the morning and we were actually able to have a conversation about the impending visit to my mum. What did I learn there? That things rarely pan out as I expect them to and so I shouldn't necessarily expect the worst.
As I've said before, if I can see this as a series of difficulties to overcome rather than one huge problem that I can't see any end to I have hopes that I will survive sanity intact.
www.facebook.com/groups/1990374111022679/
memoryfortwo@gmail.com
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