King's Daughter's Kitchen

My husband was diagnosed with dementia five years ago. I knew it would progress. I convinced myself that because he was the outdoor, healthy, gardening type man that he’d fit the longer twenty-year timeline for symptoms. Three years and lots of tests and med changes passed by. The doc said Lewy Body Dementia, and time caved in on us.

Six months after, I called the fire department to help pick my love up off the floor and take him to the hospital. For the first time since I was nineteen, I slept for more than one night alone.

I was terrified of this part of the disease, the alone, and talked about it with my counselor, who heard me say that I wouldn’t do it… be…alone. I planned to move in with my sister. In all my life, except for dorms at college, I had never been alone. In the dorm, someone was always there, so it doesn’t count in adulting.

My counselor helped me to see past my fears, thankfully, and I spent my first whole week alone in the house. I did not sleep much until the third night. I wore, still wear, one of my husband’s Hanes undershirts everyday to keep his smell close to me.

At my next counseling appointment, I repeated that I couldn’t live alone. My counselor asked, “Why not? You’re doing it. You have a dog, a security system, guns, good neighbors, church friends to check on you, police that patrol your street and the alley behind your house, and the light system for emergencies. You’re gonna put on your big girl panties and do this, right?”

“Yes,” I said, but I was still scared, so I had to make up my mind to do it afraid.

After a couple of weeks of routine, I noticed that I had forgotten to be afraid. I was doing what needed to be done. At my next appointment, my counselor congratulated me on my victory. She asked me what I had been doing. I laid out all the house chores, bill paying, and running back and forth across town to Senior Living to see my husband. I looked like a hot mess. My dress had more wrinkles than a preacher’s Bible because I was too exhausted to iron it. I had put an open sweater over it and gone on to my appointment anyway.

When I stopped talking, she said something else that smacked me right between the eyes. “You have been taking care of your husband a long time. He has caregivers now. It’s okay for you to give yourself permission to take care of you. What do you need? What do you want? Who are you without your husband?”

I had done what he liked for so long that I had no idea what I wanted or who I was without him.

“Let’s sit with that ’til next time.” She said.

She must have seen the blank look on my face.

I thought I couldn’t do much. It’s time to give myself permission to try lots of new things, to say I am doing it now.