Hello, a while back I shared how my wife and I were dealing with her mom’s declining health as a result of frontaltemporal dementia. The advice was overwhelmingly helpful. This week, after months and months of precipitous decline, we moved her into a great facility. But now that our roles as caretakers are different and largely off our plates, I just feel numb. I don’t know what to do with myself without all the myriad caregiver tasks that we had absorbed into our daily existence. I can’t clear my head from the persistent awareness of another person with a severe disability needing something at any minute. I have a lot that I could throw myself into. I’m in law school, I have two wonderful kids, and finally the time with my wife where we can just be us. But I just want to do nothing, and I don’t know how to find the energy to help my wife navigate the feelings of grief, guilt, sadness, anger, and loss that come with a loved one moving on in this way. I absolutely want to be there and I’m trying, but as I said, I just feel like a person walking through a silent movie now. Until she moved, my mother in law lived in an apartment that is the bottom floor of our house. Our front door has a large glass pane in it, and her method of communicating that she needed something was to stand at the door and press her face up against the glass. It was at first frustrating; then accepting. Now, I’ve realized I have an involuntary habit of looking at the door whenever I pass to see if she’s there needing something. All I ever wanted it seemed was to have my house back from this sense of constant need and imposition. Now I find myself looking at the door and seeing nothing and thinking, without that urgency looking in at me, I don’t know what to do. And I realized I became so used to it that now, in its absence, I miss it.
Give yourselves time. It is a part of the grieving. Dementia is as they say the long goodbye and this transition is part of it.
You obviously moved her for her safety, your wife’s safety as well as yours and other members of the household. There is nothing to feel guilty about.
If you can plan a getaway get to know the family again without having to worry about caring for anyone but you, your wife and kids. Be “selfish” for a day or so.
You're still in caretaker role so ease out of it by doing caring things for your wife, your friends, your neighbors. Believe me, this helps. I lost my caregiver role 4 months ago and I am still feeling my way, but helping others has helped me tremendously. Last of all, enjoy your new independence - sit in it - even if that means just staring at the walls and giving thanks for all you have.
Seriously, though, you can't turn off all those ingrained responses to your mother's needs the same week she moved. Give yourselves time to decompress. It may take months, but it's OK.
Your wife's caregiver duties are not over; her caregiving duties have just changed. Her job now is to advocate for her mother to see that mom is getting what she need and to solve problems between mom and the facility.
Best wishes.
I hope and pray that now you and your wife will take time for each other, and start to do the things that you enjoy. Things that perhaps you couldn't do when your MIL was living with you. God bless you both.
It takes a while, but that high-alert sensation will settle. Give yourself total downtime for now, and encourage your wife to do the same. Have you worked out a visiting and errands schedule for MIL? - don't let that grow out of proportion to compensate, will you.
You have a family with small kids, are in law school, and caregiving duties for a MIL? Wow! Even Clark Kent wouldn’t be able to do that. Impressive. I have no advice or suggestion; just admiration. I thought I was a superhuman with my caregiving duties and a full-time job, but obviously you beat me to it
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