Grief, Not Again

I just slip into spells of feeling sorry for myself. Sometimes I recognize the triggers, but sometimes I’ve no idea what led to this downward turn. Most recently, I think it was reading the obituaries of two people whose spouses had attended a caregiver support group at my retirement home. I’ve been listening to the stories of decline for a couple of years, and then they died.

We have a board where obituaries are posted. Most of the time, I read them and find them interesting, but they don’t affect me a lot. These two notices trigged something that pulled me down for several days. Here are my thoughts about why this might have happened.

My husband and I have been living in the shadow of his TBI for more than 50 years. It happened a year and a half after we were married, so really our whole life together has been affected by his accident. We agree that we’ve had a good life, yet it always possible for one or the other of us to dip into “what might have been” thinking. The life stories of the people I read about last week were the “what might have been,” though neither one was actually close to what our plans had been.

Still, they had traveled, they had finished their degrees, they had excelled in their professions, their children were wonderful, they had awards, and on and on. “Charlie” and I are both quite ordinary, so our stories would never have read like theirs. But despite our ability to make do and manage the circumstances we found ourselves in, we have really struggled. I have really struggled.

We have given up a lot. We don’t have kids because we never thought we could manage to be good parents when we were struggling to manage the challenge of daily life and jobs. Charlie has always managed to work since he was able to walk and talk after his accident. His boss welcomed him back, but I’m guessing he just sharpened pencils when he first returned to work. A “career” was not on the menu.

We expected to travel, but we’ve only managed limited trips to neighboring states. We flew to the east coast twice for a week in and around Boston, then DC. We went to a resort in Mexico for our 40th anniversary and enjoyed wind, rain, and a bit of sun. We had a boat for a while and cruised from Washington to SE Alaska enjoying frights and fun along the way. We caught fish, dug clams, and found glass floats on our beaches.

Throughout our years together I have struggled with the unfairness of my situation. Thoughts of suicide surfaced more than once, for both of us. Charlie gets overwhelmed easily, so it’s always been up to me to be flexible, to back down, to give up my plans to accommodate his need to stop and regroup. At times, I’ve fought against this, but it is what it is. By now, I’m better at setting the stage for making a request knowing that I’m unlikely to win the day. But I give in so easily, and it is so very frustrating.

I could enumerate my various frustrations, but you’d have a different set. In the end, whatever your frustrations and whatever mine, life is not fair. Best to make lemonade as best we can.

I’m wondering if you ever slip into spells of grief for what you’ve lost. Can you manage most days, or are you just under a mountain of loss and still trying to find the surface? I remember that at the beginning, there was no time to think about any of this. It was just a matter of coping, all day, every day, until Charlie began to manage more things on his own. I’m glad we’re past that, but I truly had no idea what lay ahead.

I would tough it out as we have done if I had to choose again. I can’t imagine parting. But the loss is real.