I have just been chatting to a friend on a different site. We have been cyber friends since 2006. She and I both had husbands diagnosed with Dementia about the same time so joined a Dementia site which is no longer operating. Her husband is still alive, in his third year in a nursing home and of course my good man has gone. We are both bad sleepers so sometimes chat in the middle of the night, she is in Western Australia so two hours behind me time wise.
I know it is silly to ask how will
Sometimes I have too much time to think. Then I go out somewhere to fill in time, the stores, the seaside, a park where I can sit in the sun. It is not ideal but I am finding at my age that I can't just ring a friend and pop over any more. I just rang one who was supposed to go to an craft evening with me tonight and she said: "We have visitors, I'll call you back later." and I could hear her husband's voice in the background and knew that it was a "couples afternoon", something I no longer h
Something really strange happened. For the last three days I have not been able to make national calls or information calls on 1300 numbers. I notified my provider on Tuesday but the person who works on that was away. She called me back today to say someone tried to hijack my line! She said she would be able to have it all back the way it was by tomorrow and I would not be charged for the last three days calls, so I am guessing that there were some. I have never heard of this before so was
I have just been away for just over two weeks with rather a complicated itinerary but all worked out well. It has all been a while in the planning phase and I mostly got things right but I was not to know that it would rain for the first ten days of the holiday, the temperature would drop and it would be suddenly wintery. Hot and dry Broken Hill was unseasonably cold and wet but I survived.
First I visited my son Trevor and family, it was lovely to be with them again. I think the move has b
Cannot believe what I just did! I wrote a couple of paragraphs of this blog and then shut it down without saving it. After six hundred or so blogs you'd think I'd know better eh? Put it down to not sleeping last night. I think all the coming and going for the past week as I went to various church services as well as fitting in all the usual round of chores has tired me out and when I am too tired I don't sleep.
I find all the "family festivals" harder now my family is scattered. The last
Well, it was good to have Trevor call back in and pack his car with things to take back to Broken Hill. He was disappointed that some of what he had planned to take back had been taken by the men from the local Men's Shed that I had allowed to take tools. Unfortunately that included some of his! But when your children say no, they do not want what is in the garage Mum then I think that is what the answer is! Silly me. We were both sad that had happened but that's life. And one of the problems
I always think "things are going to be better when..." Things will be better when I get over Ray;s death, things will be better when I have the cabin roof fixed, things will be better when I get used to living alone. I know, I know, if it has to be it is all up to me. But I do not see it that way sometimes so things will be better when I get someone to help me, things will get better when I find someone to do things with, things will be better when .....
It isn't a real big deal but today
I've just been down to my daughter's for a few days. Being away from home helps me put my life into perspective, sharing someone else's life for a few days also shows me what an effort everyone has to put into life to just stay stable. I know my daughter works really hard in her ministry, in her home and in her community. I know fitting me and her widowed mother-in-law into that picture is not easy, but she does it with much love. I know what it is like fitting visitors into a busy week from
Just had a couple of sad days, an old friend died, I didn't get invited to a 50th birthday party while some of my friends did,life is not happening in the way I want it to. Nothing major, just the usual small stuff. The sorting out and throwing away is also getting to me. It is so relentless. I hate to see things Ray valued just thrown away but it all has to go eventually, I know that. So much bad news lately, it seems as if the world is less stable than usual.News of illnesses suffered by old
I was saddened today to read Ann's post on the passing of Will Furia, our hostwill, another good soul who put his spare time into helping others on here. I remember having a chat with Will one night and he said he had a soft spot for Australia as one of his distant ancestors was Captain James Cook who on one of his journeys mapped the east coast of Australia and is credited as the "discoverer". Of course we are moving away from being discovered now, our aboriginal Australians had been here 40,00
Sometimes I pray for a miracle and what I get is something like one of those old black and white comedy movies with strange characters doing strange things. For the last two days a local "scrappie" (metal collector) and his mate has been helping me clean up under the house and cabin and fill a 3 cubic metre skip (bin) which is parked outside my house. Drop off was this Wednesday, pick-up next Wednesday.
When the bin came I was appalled at what I had done. There sat the bin, huge empty an
It is strange watching someone else do the hard yards. As a long term caregiver for a stroke survivor I sometimes thought of myself as unique - well no, there are 50,000 of us just in my state who are caregivers listed as 24/7 and so entitled to a small allowance. It used to be called a "Domiciliary Nursing Allowance" and was given to people who basically were doing home nursing. I got that for a number of years as Ray got to the stage where he had to be showered etc. So I was certainly NOT u
I read about stroke depression and I do not have that reason for feeling blue. The sun is shining, the birds are singing but still some days I feel sad. I have a roof over my head and warm blankets and nice food but still some days I feel bad about life. I guess that is part of the human condition. I miss Ray, I miss someone to talk things over with, I miss someone who is on my side. I miss being part of a couple, I miss the real Ray, the laughing guy I married when I was 21.
I miss al
I was down at my daughter Shirley's for just over a week.and as usual It was hard to come home, to leave the family that I have been having fun with and make the tiring journey back but I know that they have to go on with their busy lives and I am not able to stay. I still miss having someone here when I get home and I suspect I always will.
But this time I met a friend coming up the road to see if I was in and went to her place for a cuppa and a chat so all was well and I did have someone
I read all the blogs full of angst from many of you who are living in the twilight zone of caregiving and wonder why I do not feel happy and settled and glad not to be a caregiver now. But somehow I don't feel like that, life after being a long term caregiver is full of a whole new set of anxieties and problems. So I think that while we are full-time caregivers the problems just compound faster than in the rest of our lives.
Where does time go? Summer is flying by at a great rate. I seem
I think in 44 years of marriage and 13 years as a caregiver I lost who I was supposed to be. I am slowly rediscovering my likes and dislikes and without changing too much will slowly adapt my surroundings to reflect who I am today, still a mother, grandmother, friend and companion to some but no longer a daughter or a wife. It is hard to know what a 66 year old widow is supposed to do but for me that is simply get on with life and see what happens. Who I am is still involved in being a church
I just listened to "Auld Lang Syne" on Julie's blog. It is lovely to look at but it suddenly struck me that It is so UNLIKE our New Year. We are in the middle of summer. Our country is full of heat haze and humidity at this time of the year. We are lucky if we have a cool breeze rippling the ocean when we brave the hot sand to go down to the beach. And some nights the heat hangs heavy on us like a blanket and there is not even a whisper of a breeze.
When we lived inland,we experienced mor
It's to early to really know what life will be like in 2014. I haven't decided what my resolutions are, the choice is between "accepting challenge" and "accepting change". I know I will have to do both. The world for last year FUN became a reality toward the end of the year when at last I started to accept invitations without thought. It had taken me that long to realise I didn't have the ties, the need to get home, the need to be in a routine. I no longer had to worry about Ray and Mum. I
The noise stopped at 10.30am this morning (27th) as the last family members left. I survived, I only had a couple of bad moments and managed to hide for a few minutes so no-one knew. It was wonderful to have so many happy moments. Once again no mention of Ray but there were stories from the past shared by brother and sister. Our older son did not come except to drop his children off yesterday. He didn't even come into the house. So still some sadness about that.
Christmas Day turned out
I went to a funeral today. It was the funeral of a woman not much older than me. I had known her since I was seventeen. I remember being introduced to her as K's girlfriend. I was jealous. This was in a household of boys I always thought of as "mine". I laugh about that looking back but you know how intense teenagers can be. They moved away after they got married and I saw them only occasionally. Then he turned up in the same Dementia Lodge as Mum, pitifully aged with early onset dementi
Sometimes I think about how excited I used to be when Christmas was just days away. When I was a small child my parents were not well off, we had come to Australia with very little money and I used to get just one gift, it was marked "love from Mum and Dad". I used to envy the children in our street who had aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents close by as well as their Mum and Dad who gave them presents and small keepsakes. I did have relatives but they all lived in England or Canada an
Having someone come for a visit is a good thing when you live on your own. It is company, it is noise and conversation and another face at the table. It is also hard work and fills so much of your time while they are here. I had a houseguest for a week and enjoyed it so much. For once Ray's name came up naturally and sometimes in a funny way so that we laughed. Vicki and her parents were at Ray's funeral and came the next day for a visit before driving the twelve hours back to where they li
I was reminded how lucky I am this weekend. I had taken Vicki, the young friend who is staying with me to the Saturday markets at a friend's church. We had looked at all the stalls and were sitting having tea and scones when a man came up and sat down at our table. He obviously had brain damage and told us he had a career as a school teacher and youth worker when he was involved in a car accident that was not his fault and his whole world was turned upside down. It reminded me so much of the
It was the anniversary of Mum's death yesterday, she died on the 20th November 2012 two months and one day after Ray died. I went to to her nursing home Carer's meeting in the afternoon. We are allowed to keep on attending the meetings for a year after our loved one dies. It is a good idea as there is still so much you want to say and the meeting is a safe environment to speak about your feelings. I find I can still help others too. It is good to still be able to use all of that experience t
Last year as I left the Womens Weekend I was very tearful, it was to be my last! But after a deputation approached me in October and said that I MUST go so I went again. Wow, I had such a wonderful time, I just love those women, survivors and caregivers alike. It is like there should be some award I could give them simply for being who they are. I am sure if I met the people I am acqainted with, who have been good friends and supporters to me on this site, I would feel exactly the same.
