Sorting things out

You know how it is, some jobs you do because you want to, other you do because you want to help someone else and some jobs you do because, simply, they have to be done.

Since I had the pleasure of being made redundant and learning my wife would never be well enough o come home within a few days of each other, you can imagine I have had a number of jobs to do, most of them imposed by my new situation.

On top of that I was faced with selling the house to downsize because I simply couldn’t afford the mortgage any longer without work, I wasn’t too worried because there were so many tragic images of my wife, so many ghosts, that I was uncomfortable living there.

Then it came to a crunch… it became clear that I had to clear out a lot of staff, mine and hers, to fit into a smaller house… also because I wouldn’t be wearing her clothes, using her craft books, they were easy to sort out and clear out… well not easy, but I got through it without too much trauma.

I found that in order to get interest to sell the house I had to clear spaces and redecorate in magnolia throughout… I was doing it to sell a family home that I had lived in since 1980… not because I wanted to, but because it was full of ghosts and I couldn’t afford it.

Imagine how that left me feeling… a total failure… a man who had so lacked ambition and drive, in a career sense, that I couldn’t kee pa roof over the families collective heads, and indeed I couldn’t protect my wife well enough to keep her under the roof anyway.

I am wracked with guilt that I couldn’t do anything to slow down or ease her illness, she is missing out on the greatest experience a couple can have, seeing two gorgeous grandchildren grow up, being a part of their lives, supporting them and your own child. She would have so loved that, but it is not to be…

Now the house, as I moved things listlessly around, redecorated, of course time passed, it took me weeks to do each room, not days, and the ghosts started to fade… I realise I was painting her out of my life… and the ghosts were going as well, and strangely I was beginning to feel more at ease living there.

Don’t misunderstand this, I am keeping some keepsakes, I have countless photos of her, and a head full of the most wonderful memories, which are starting to resurface through the hell that life has been just lately.

So, I now have a home redecorated more or less top to bottom, just the bedroom to go, and the ghosts have subsided to a controllable level, but I still have the problem of selling.

Then it changed, I wont explain the changes, but I have paid off the mortgage and have a few quid in the bank. I also have now retired so am getting a pension, so no longer the soul destroying search through the situations vacant

I haven’t at this stage touched the garden for two years, to say it was a disgrace would be to compliment it indeed, but now I realised that I was doing the jobs for me, because I wanted to, I anted to stay in my home… and am going to. I got stuck into the garden, and 80% of it has been transformed from a 3 feet high tangle of nettles and weeds to something that people tell me looks really nice….

Then comes the last job on the list.. sorting out her own stuff in the cupboards. My wife was keen on craft… cross-stitch, embroidery, gold-work, knitting… anything you can name, except crochet! I don’t know why crochet, but there it is, she cannot tell me now, she cannot communicate at all.

This is where the pain that I cant cope with comes in. Although I have settled again in what I now consider to be my house, my life is improving as I gain strength and slowly start to accept the situation but the guilt I feel that my wife can’t enjoy any of this, she is locked in a cruel and destructive dementia that robs her of communication, of pleasure, of dignity, of friends, family and home, grows by the hour. It is eating me up, and as much as I can put on a brave face when needed, the pain is crippling most of the time… it is lonely being a carer, lonely, stressful and tiring.

This week, tonight, has been bad for me… the last cupboard… almost the last cupboard, this time it is a lot of her craft stuff I have to sort out… three huge boxes.. I remember we went to Bakewell, there is a lovely craft shop there… she got a really lovely fairy picture to cross-stitch, and all the threads, it cost a small fortune.. I remember as though it was yesterday the look of pleasure on her face as she kept looking at it as we walked along, how she kept it on her lap most of the drive home and looked at it… so thrilled with it.. she went out and bought a frame the next day… but there it was, gathering dust, untouched, in the box… not only that, but literally dozens of others, from small Disney pictures which are starter kits right up to huge table cloths and the like, all with one little flower done… otherwise untouched.. many still with a needle stuck in the cloth.

I hoave found loads of sewing frames, and most other sewing things… could almost set up a shop, but it makes me realise that her illness had been coming on for far longer than I realised… what sort of husband can be so blind as to not see this developing.. I have let her down so badly, I feel so down, so sorry for myself… but I shouldn’t, I have some more life to look forward to, it is her who doesn’t, her who cannot enjoy her grandchildren, her who cannot enjoy her sewing, her walking in the woods, by the river bank.. I have all that still, she doesn’t… what right have I to feel so down about it. None perhaps, but by god it doesn’t stop me. I feel totally devastated by it all.

The memories, the lovely memories, that these unused gifts and things trigger in me, I am so torn between the joy and pride of knowing what a wonderful wife and friend she has been to me, and what a lousy undeserved situation we now find ourselves in.

I know I owe it to her to move on, but I can’t, not yet… I know there is no recovery, but as long as she is there, I can go and give her a hug… then I cannot let go, not in the least.