Where Do We Go From Here

I am still locked in what I have come to regard as the Caregiver's Sleep Cycle - I can't seem to sleep for more than a couple of hours without waking up.  Whether it's an external noise or internal alarm that wakes me, it always happens with a shock, a rush of adrenalin, sometimes an audible gasp.  I lie there, disoriented, my heart pounding, wondering, What's happened?  What have I forgotten? What do I need to do?  Even after I remember that there's nothing - no sounds of distress, no medication schedule forgotten, nothing I need to do that can't wait until morning - the initial jolt from waking is so severe, it sometimes takes hours for me to get back to sleep.

Yesterday, I spoke to a friend who had (also with the help of hospice) provided end-of-life care at home for her sister, who passed away after a long and courageous battle with cancer.  Although her ordeal ended nearly a month ago, my friend says she is still not sleeping well.  While I take some comfort in knowing that there is someone else who understands EXACTLY what I'm going through when I say I cannot sleep, I'm also thinking Dear God, another MONTH of not sleeping - will this EVER be OVER?


The last two days have been filled with busy work on the memorial service - writing the obituary notices that will run both in our local paper and in Florida, going through boxes of photos and old photo albums to select pictures for a slide show to run at the memorial, downloading songs that were Peggy's favorites.  The activity seems to be helping my mother keep it together - the distraction, combined with looking at images of Grandma in happier, healthier days, is taking (at least temporarily) the edge off her grief.


I have my moments of temporary insanity.  I can generally talk to one of my friends, or one of Peggy's friends, about her death without getting emotional.  But this morning when I called to make an appointment with my hair stylist and explained I needed to get a haircut before my Grandmother's memorial service Saturday, I got all choked up.  Ridiculous.  The tears seem to come at the oddest times, but they rarely last more than a few moments.  I'm still waiting for the gut-wrenching breakdown that is surely ahead.

I have not yet been able to read her last letter to me, but I am wearing a ring she left me - the diamond anniversary band my grandfather gave her to replace the inexpensive plain band she had worn when they first married.  I have fairly simple tastes and it's a little too much "bling" for me to wear every day, but I'm not quite ready to relinquish it to the safe deposit box just yet. Right now, it feels like a sort of talisman, as if wearing something that meant so much to her keeps her close.  I wear it on my right hand, along with another family talisman - the wedding band that belonged to my father, who died before I was born.  If Peggy really did go to Heaven, I wonder if she met him there, and what that conversation was like - hopefully, he wouldn't have to shout at her, or write on an erasable board.

When I started this journal, I had no idea how long it would continue.  I guess I was thinking (a little naively) that the end of my grandmother's life would not come quite so soon.  Now that it has, I have been thinking a lot about how to continue.  I believe I need to continue - there's something very therapeutic about spilling one's guts in a semi-controlled fashion.  So from here on what I plan to do, as a means of writing my way through the grieving process, is backtrack a bit and try to explain how I got here.  I'd also like to answer some of the questions I have been asked by a number of people in the last few weeks, including the most common one: Why did I feel compelled to take on this responsibility?

One of the things I did not fully realize is that we were providing end-of-life care for Peggy, long before we knew (or were willing to accept) that we were doing it.  In a way, this was a blessing, because the span of time between our knowing that  she was actually dying and the time she passed was relatively short. If someone had told us months ago that she was dying, and we had spent all that time waiting for the end, I don't know if I would have had the strength to endure it.  But we were protected, both by our ignorance of Peggy's true condition (something I also feel compelled to explain) and our hope that she could still, somehow, get better.

In addition to writing about the end of her life, I'd  like to continue sharing my great memories of Peggy - and there are many.  I am also going to create another page for this blog - Peggy in Her Own Words - and share some of the stories she left for us in the wonderful Grandma journal from my bookshelf.  Peggy touched many lives when she was in this world - that in itself, is also a story.  Now that her physical presence has departed, I think the best possible way honor her memory is to help her to continue to touch the lives of others by sharing her story.  I hope that you will join me for this new stage of my journey as I look back in order to move forward.