Dark Places

After the events described in the last blog it became almost impossible to write anything. 

It still is, but I will try anyway.

On one level there were changes. There were days when Rosemarie's behaviour was less remote: on one occasion she actually reached out to cuddle me, and there have been expressions of amusement and a return of the urgent attempts to communicate. But there is also more of the remoteness and reluctance to eat. The attempts to stand continue but there doesn't seem to be any awareness of the possibility of walking any more: if I mention it I just get a blank stare. 

A wave of deadness came over me. It has several fathers. There is the realisation that not only is it not going to get any better, but that there is the strong possibility that it is going to get worse very slowly and take a long time to do it. I don't know what is worse: the shock of rapid deterioration or the agony of long drawn out decline. 

And every day for the past year I have gone to the Care Home and tried to bring comfort and stimulation, with no real positive result and no certainty that I am not making things worse. I have to believe I am making a difference but most of the time it is really hard.

Could I be doing this for the next twenty years?

And there are continuing feelings of guilt. When I watch her face crumple in misery and the tears run down her cheeks, I am chilled with the possibility that she spends a lot of her waking hours confused, frightened, unable to make her needs known, but basically knowing what is happening and being as brave as she can in her terrible loneliness.

It eats away at me.

Then there is the practical aspect. The Care Home is by far the best one we visited and the staff are generally amazing. We have no complaints about their dedication and their fondness for Rosemarie, but as is true everywhere there is much that is broken and this means and almost endless stream of things to fix. I am wired like that: if I see something not working I have to try to fix it. Anyway. But where Rosemarie's welfare is concerned it is essential. Whether it is getting her medication right, doing something about her weight loss (don't get me started...) or just trying to make sure that the recorded notes bear some resemblance to reality...it is exhausting. But this is not something I could give up even if I wanted to.

And I am trying to get a job. That is a full time job on its own. I am finding out just how the job market looks at IT managers who have turned 60, and I am also confronting the consequences of not keeping myself up to date with the latest developments in the industry for the last year. And the whole 'Use It Or Lose It' thing. 

It is hard to concentrate on chasing jobs when I feel I need to spend my time with Rosemarie, and it is increasingly hard to create the energy to keep cheerful and supportive around her when I know I should be getting a job.

So I feel these waves of deadness roll over me. It is not panic or fear or despair and I don't think it is depression. It feels more like some kind of bleak exhaustion. I have lost myself wandering in some dark places, and perspective was an early casualty.

It will pass. Summer is coming and things will happen. 

Normal service will be resumed shortly.