Do you remember the book: "I'll teach my Dog 100 words?" well we learn new words when we do something different in our lives. During my time as a caregiver I learned a lot of new words. I learned the meaning of therapy, rehabilitation, recovery, survivor, caregiver, isolation, rejection, loneliness. I learned what MRI, TIA and many other acronyms stood for. I learned about patience and I learned about what "till death us do part" really means. Above all I learned the real meaning of LOVE, that true loves that goes beyond the call of duty and beyond romance and passion and a lot of other emotions we mistake for love. Real love does go on and on and on, regardless of circumstances.

Ray and I didn't have an always happy marriage, like most people we had good times and bad times, we had various levels of income but we still raised three kids and we somehow managed to pay off a mortgage and own a house. We looked after our kids , our parents and our neighbours and did all the right things as far as we were able to. But that did not save Ray from having the strokes. Bad things as we know do happen to good people. But good people have the power to somehow get through them, get over them and get beyond them.

Somehow I am surviving widowhood. I never wanted to be alone and up till Ray's hospitalization, his moving into the nursing home and his death I had never been alone. That is apart from the various other hospitalizations, but they always seemed so temporary. Now my aloneness is permanent. I may or may not get a new partner somewhere in the distant future but for now it is just me. So I have to learn some new words like independence, handyman, publc transportation, instructions, directions and "damnitall" which was one of my mother's favourite expressions when something went wrong so I use it quite a bit. I am learning to adjust, I am learning that it is okay not to be able to do something, it is a hard learning curve.

I am learning the beauty of Facebook chat. When it is 11pm my time I might be chatting to someone in America who is just getting up or someone in England who is just having lunch. I have a regular friend I talk to on Facebook, he is just a friend, nothing more. He remembers me from when I was 17 and we have both lived around the same areas for 50 years so have seen a lot of changes. Our chat can be about a place, a time in our era, household gossip as we still have some friendships in common. I am learning that people have similar interests but vastly different opinions to my own, that having limitations does not have to lead to disagreements, that friendship is an end in itself.

I am learning that friendships overcome age barriers and my friends can be three, thirty three or ninety three and still be the best of companions. When you have a partner friends are not so important but when you are alone they are so much more important. Survival for me is based on relationships. I need people around me, I do enjoy solitude too but in small doses. So friends have in some way taken the place of my now scattered family. Friends are someone I ring in an emergency, to ask for advice, to ask for directions, to ask about something I have come up against but know nothing about. So I have learned that friends are an invaluable resource.

I have learned the importance of social interaction. I learned here the importance of the Chat Rooms. When I started out as a chat host I did general chat and talked to a lot of survivors. This gave me a look into Ray's world. Ray could not tell me about his feelings, never could even before the strokes. So when I wondered how did he feel about having a stroke, his lack of independence, his need to be reliant on me I heard it in the stories of other survivors. Survivors and their stories helped me to get better picture of how the world looked to Ray and so I learned to adjust to his meaning of life, his needs, his life as it was now with all it's frustrations. I learned words like compassion, empathy, forgiveness, endurance, and learned words I never wanted to hear like incontinence and dementia (though that one I already knew as my mother had dementia).

Then I started Caregiver Chat and other caregivers taught me that support was where you find it, that other people understand because they are in a similar situation and that others can share your emotions. I learned that I was never alone, that other people did think of me and prayed for me. We actually occupied the same time if not the same space even if they were not in the same room as I was. They too were sitting at their computers with tears running down their faces as we shared another's harrowing moments or learned that further deterioration of a friend's husband or partner meant they had to had to move into care. We shared whatever was causing us grief. And we learned to handle the ultimate grief, when death came as an end.

And of course I am a wordsmith so have found much joy in blogging. I have a blog here, you are reading one of them now and one on widowedvillage too, which is my frustrations of widowhood blog. I started it for the reason that I didn't want this blog to deteriorate into a "poor me" blog about loneliness and all the troubles associated with widowhood, I want this blog always to reflect on the stroke journey which in a way will never be over for me as it dominated 22 years of my 44 year marriage, a big slice of my life. And because I still have friends here who understand.

And so my life has always been a learning experience. I learn as I go along, hopefully I learn, adjust, accept and move on. But sometimes of course I get stuck in one spot for a while and grief has certainly contributed to that. But I know I will live long enough to learn another 100 words and maybe many more. I am hoping some of them are happy words like retirement, holidays, travel and include new experiences. We will have to wait and see.