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Nemo

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About Nemo

  • Birthday 03/12/1939

Previous Fields

  • Date of Death
    Oct 31, 2011
  • Name/Location of Hospice if they were involved:
    Camdenton, Mo.

Profile Information

  • Your gender
    Female
  • Location (city, state)
    Pittsburg, MO.
  • Interests
    camping, the outdoors, golf, knitting, crocheting, swedish weaving, reading, biking, traveling. I like being with people.
  1. I feel just like you do Cakes. It has been 18 months and I seem to be getting worse. The biggest thing for me is the alone feeling. When I'm at home I just can't shake it. I think I have accepted Jim's death and wouldn't ask for him back the way he was with the Alz. But after so many years of being with him and our family, I just feel abandoned. I can't get off this pity party when I know I need to help someone else and it would probably help my feelings. Today I'm going to talk to Hospice to see if I can help them in their office. I would be no good talking with patients at this point or probably ever. I'm hoping to find some purpose to my life so I quit thinking of how bad I have it. I have a nice home and I feel guilty for being so down when others have it so much worse. I know all that but changing my thinking is very hard to do. I hate my life the way it is and the future looks so bleak.
  2. Thank you for the reply. It feels good to just talk about Jim and where I am at. I really intend to be a survivor and I will work on it. It's just hard to create a new life just for me when I really don't know what way to go. I am not one to sit and do nothing as it gets to me and I know Jim wants me to find a life without him. I don't want to disappoint his expectations of me. I like reading what everyone writes and it feels good to know that I am not alone on my feelings that reach pretty low sometimes. Today is a rainy dark day and it's been tough making myself do something useful but I know tomorrow will be a sunny day and a lot more uplifting to me. Jim always was so positive about life and was not one to look back but to always look forward and make new plans. He had a very positive affect on my life and I attribute a lot of who I am to him. Not only that he was very handsome!! hee hee had to add that. I was so fortunate to have met him. You have been very encouraging to me and I enjoy reading what is posted, it really helps.
  3. I am late time wise with this post but have enjoyed reading it. I'm kind of a newbie to this group. I just wanted to reply. I am at 18 months of my hubby, Jim, who was and is the love of my life. I met Jim in Duluth, MN where he was one of the engineers on a new bridge in the Duluth harbor. We met in June and married in Oct. and it was 52 years of a wonderful life, before the Alz. took him. We have 3 wonderful, successful children who are very caring and only live 3 hours from me. We are a very close family and attribute some of that to our wonderful camping years which we dearly loved to do. Jim graduated from Northwestern in 58 with a Civil Engineering degree. One of his best friends continuted to teach there after he graduated, Lyle Mockros. It just feels good to tell about him and our life as I was so truly blessed.. I was adopted by a wonderful family and then in 1987 I found my birth family and we met and are very close to this day. I've had a wonderful life but I still am very selfish and want my Jim back, but not with the Alzheimer of course. He really died about 2 years before he died as his mind continued to deminish and the last 8 months he didn't know me or our children and became combative so I had to put him in a nursing home which was the very hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life. I still cry when I think about it. He was a kind, gentle, wonderful and so much more person. We were able to travel quite a bit and loved it, had our wine about every night when we would discuss our day or whatever. I still have wine at 5 and I usually call a friend and we have wine together so I'm not "drinking alone". Life is just so very different. This winter I spent 7 weeks away and traveled to Australia and New Zealand and stayed with friends. But when I came home it was just awful! I felt the bottom had dropped out of my life. I knew it would be hard coming back to emptiness but I didn't know it would be so bad. I have found that our couple friends have changed and I felt abandoned. For about 2 weeks I was desperatly depressed but I am coming out of it and have some new friends who have been supportive. I am going to volunteer more and with summer coming I will be busier with golf and yard work. I live rural on a lake so it is hard to be involved in something besides the nursing home or serving meals at the senior center. I'm not ready to leave our home which we designed and Jim helped to build yet but I'm 74 and it is a lot to take care of, even though I like the yard work. I just hate the lonleliness.
  4. Thank you all for the support. It helps so much to vent here my real true feelings. When I was going through the Alz. with Jim I partifcipated in a chat room on Alz.org and I couldn't have done it without the support of so many good people who understood what I was going through. Now I have found you all and I think it will help a lot. I had a Dr. apt. this week and was lamenting to him(I like him a lot and he went thru the Alz. with Jim) and he gave me lots of good strokes and also agreed with me what I have been going through with the feeling of loss of friends and support. We talked about volunteering too and I am in the process of figuring out what I want to do. I met with a lady in our church who has been given one month and Hospice was there and we talked about me volunteering. We decided I would be better helping in the office as I couldn't seem to keep the tears down while I was there. I am determined that I will make a new life but it is so very hard. Is there a way to know when there are replies from what I post. I can't seem to get around like I'd like.
  5. I just finished reading all these again and it just says where I feel I am. I have never felt this hopelessness before in my life and I don't like it. I know what everyone means about people pulling away as I feel that. I feel they think I should just get busy and get involved and I know that would help too. I just don't know what way to turn or what to get involved in. There is always the nursing home but I don't feel that is what I need. I want to be around uplifting situations and the only thing I can think of is a hospital 1/2 hour away. I just feel like my world has been cut away. I am realizing that I am now just Linda alone in the world and needing to find a whole new life. I went from my folks house to Jim's house so have never been on my own. Now at 74 I'm tossed out in a completely different situation. There is a sick, empty feeling in me now that I don't know how to deal with. I have not had grief couseling as after Jim died I felt I could handle it, and I did that first year. I hear people talk about grief counseling and that it just makes you feel worse listening to all the bad things people are saying. Someone else told me to go to the nursing home(where Jim was with Alz.) and help others who have no one and it will make me feel better. I don't seem to have the motivation.
  6. I am on my second year which I have heard is harder than the first year. My hubby had Alzheimer's so I really lost him about 4 years before he died. I am now having trouble with what do I do with my life and making decisions is so very hard alone. We designed and he helped build our retirement house on a lake in MO. It's very nice and there are a lot of memories here for me and our three children and their families. I have an awesome view that we loved. So now I sit here and wonder about leaving all this but I have no desire to move anywhere. I know that wherever I would go "myslef" will go along so a change in location probably won't help but then again it might. There isn't a whole lot of activity as it is rural but I can go 1/2 hour and be in a pretty nice small town. I just feel so mixed up with my life right now and frustrated. I feel my friends have pulled away and they are mainly couples which I hear happens. I don't have anyone come over anymore and the phone doesn't ring. Just feel empty. I sound like a real complainer!! I really am not and I do keep busy going and doing. Also have a big yard to care for but I kind of like that. I think the first year I was challenged by all I had to do(which I had already done hence the Alzheimer) and was proud of myself for being able to do it all. Now it is mundane and I know I HAVE to do all these things.
  7. I'm so sorry about your loss of Dave and I can so understand what you are feeling at this time. I also give my feelings of sorrow to Maf. I lost my Jim Oct 31, 2011 due to Alzheimer's. It was horrible to watch him lose his mind bit by bit and not even know who I was or our three children. I can remember thinking I didn't want him to live because he was getting to the point of not being able to swallow, couldn't walk etc. When he died there was some relief for him and for me too in watching him lose himself. But shortly after those bad thoughts of the suffering left and I would only remember the good things about him. Actually, this made the grieving much harder but at least it brought him back to my memory the way he really was. We were married 52 years and being single is such a new way of life for me. I just can't hardly stand it without him but there is some healing too. I can't say when it will get better because we will never forget them but I want to be able to embrace life again and the second year has been difficult. I know it was several months before I could sleep more than 2 hours at a time without waking and thinking about him. It's just the hardest thing I've ever had to face in my life. It's like half of you is gone and I really think that is true because we have lost half of our idenity in who we are. I'm no longer Jim's wife, now I'm just me alone. It's important to try to go on with something that will help keep me busy and movitvated too. For me, it's important to be around other people and I have some good friends whom I can let down with and let my emotions show. I just want you to know I understand what you are feeling and no words can make it go away but it does mean so much to know you aren't alone in your grieving. What you are feeling is what we've all been through and I am still grieving after 18 months but it's in a different way. I am new here but I already am feeling better reading these posts. Bless you.
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