Seven months after mother’s death: updates and musings
October 27, 2012 12 Comments
It is seven months since my mother died, and I sometimes get queries on how I am doing, so I’m sharing an update.
My mother’s death meant I lost the person my life had been revolving around for the last several years. My sense of identity changed. My role, responsibility and activities needed a rethink. Given the sweeping change caused by her death, I think I’m handling my situation well enough.
I am living a reasonably active and productive life. While I have not firmly decided the way I will divide my time and energy across current and new activities, I am clearer now than I was some months ago. Redefining my life activities and directions will take more time, but that’s okay; I prefer to proceed cautiously and experiment with small changes, see what works, what doesn’t, and tweak things rather than do something dramatic and then have regrets.
I continue to face challenges on the emotional front, where my readjustment is slower. I continue to ponder over my new identity, my desires and my possible prioritizations. And, I also try to understand what “moving on” means. I tell myself that while a situation may change abruptly, the related habits and personal characteristics take time to change, and that well-set patterns have an implicit inertia.
My years of caregiving changed me in many ways. I am different in what I like to do, what I find important, what I am curious about or concerned about, what I feel about issues and incidents, what I want to buy or see, and so on. Some of my earlier friends now have life direction, interests, and priorities that are very different from mine, and there may not be enough commonalities to resume friendship. Our paths have diverged, and I am not much in touch with them. I am trying to make new friends, but my somewhat introvert nature makes that tough.
Seeing my mother’s decline and staying emotionally close and connected through the process, is helpful in the process of closure, but even now, not a day passes when I don’t think of her or miss her in a gentle way. And there is a sense of loss I experience when I see how she spent her last several years alongside how her peer group is faring.
In the past few months after her death, I have met my mother’s friends and peers, many of them after several years. They ask me about her last few years, or start telling me stories from their shared past. And they bring back memories of a mother who was younger and more active. As I talk to these friends of my mother, I notice how, though they are my mother’s contemporaries, they are physically active and cognitively sharp. I become acutely aware of what my mother could have been like without her dementia, and how different our interactions would have been. It hurts.
It will take time to find my new equilibrium of friends and interests and to find my peace with the overall loss. I also know this will need effort on my part, and this is what people call “moving on.”
But what is “moving on?”
I sometimes have people advising me that I should not think of the past and “move on” and forget what happened because now I am “free.”
I find that approach strange and unacceptable. It assumes that my life was a black hole when I was a caregiver, and that is not true. My years as a caregiver are an integral part of my life. They had their ups and downs, like any other phase of life has. The years involved work, responsibility, and tension. They also gave me the fulfillment of staying emotionally connected to my mother, they taught me many things about life, identity, joy. They changed my perspective about what matters and what does not, what dignity is, what connection is, and so on.
As far as I understand, “moving on” is something that happens all the time, for everyone. I think any “moving on” can be robust and wholesome only if it involves resolution and peace and consolidation of lessons learned. It cannot be achieved by amnesia or denial or pushing the past under the carpet.
Anyway, I have started consolidating my dementia care thoughts and my experience sharing, hoping that sharing and structuring will help me neaten my mind and perhaps help others. As part of this, here’s one e-interview (A Caregiver’s Role) and below is a video where I share my late stage dementia care experience. (You can also view it directly on youtube here.)
Main links referred to in this post
- A Caregiver’s Role
- Video: Late stage dementia care at home: a caregiver from India shares her experience
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