Did you ever wonder why a wounded animal instinctively goes off by itself to lick its wounds?
I believe it knows what it needs to heal. We are much like that wounded animal when we are wounded. We tend to go off by ourselves and curl up on the bed or sofa with ice cream or wine, watch movies and listen to songs that make us cry. We get sad and angry and break things, cry out and break down all in private. Our friends and family may label this behavior as "isolating ourselves" and considers it unhealthy if it goes for a longer period of time than what is socially acceptable. They may say things like "You need to get out more", "Don't wallow in self pity", "Exercise", "Take up a hobby", always offering up their slice of advise that they have always been taught or that worked for them at one time. Yes. They are only trying to help but most of the time they are just wasting their time because we aren't ready to do what they think we need to do.
From personal experience with loss and wounds I have noticed that the length of time needed for mourning is individual and dependent on the degree of trauma or loss. It can be anywhere from 3 days to 3 months to one year. Some wounds can take years and may need intervention of therapy.
But what I want to talk about here today is something I have watched happen to my aunt. The elderly are faced with some very big changes when their health begins to fail. They begin a process of grief that has been described with stages. And those of us who end up as the caretakers of those individuals go through some stages of their own.
These are "The 5 stages of grief". They are considered universal. It is the length of time and the order of the stages that is individual. The typical order is as follows:
Denial and Isolation
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
I watched my aunt go through the grieving process after falling for the 6th time in several years and having to move in with her sister, leaving her home, her things, her friends and everything she has ever known for 95 years. She has outlived every one of her 5 brothers and one of her 4 sisters. The sisters are in their 80's and 90's but in poor physical health. They can't take care of her when they can barely take care of themselves. The sister that is 80 is the one who was able to take her in so she did not go to a place she did not want to go, a nursing home. That sister is my mother. I have been living with her and caring for her during numerous health issues.
She has been licking her wounds for about 6 months now. It has been fairly typical so far. She did deny her elderly onset diabetes diagnosis the entire time she was in rehab and after she came home. She kept saying the doctors were wrong even though the paramedics were shocked at her blood sugar level (600) when they had to come after she fell in our home and broke her collar bone and even after the doctor at the hospital admitted her because he wanted to get her sugar level under control. Once they did that she was sent to rehab where part of her treatment was daily insulin shots. Again, she protested saying how they had to be wrong because when she was home her doctor did not have her on any diabetes treatment. We told her that is why she kept falling. Because of her age diabetes was not the first thing the doctors thought of. They thought she was falling as older people do.
This distressed her immensely. How could her family doctor for 50 years be so wrong and everyone around her miss this diagnosis? We wondered the same thing but soon realized they were placating her. She was in her 90's after all. What is the point of putting her through the rigors of daily testing and injections? She can be very determined not to accept that she is failing and they let her since all she did was sit on her couch and her friends and family waited on her hand and foot. There wasn't much opportunity to have symptoms. When she did try to go out or be on her own was when she fell, over and over.
She told me she had planned on going home and living alone after she spent the winter with us. She was in denial that her body was failing and that she would not go back to her old life. She couldn't or wouldn't wrap her head around what was happening. The tragic part of
all this is that she has no dimensia. She is sharp as a tac. She is very aware of everything happening around her. Her memory is in tact aBut as far as you might force it, it's fair enough to call Apple devices 'left wing' insofar as the company model tends to lean toward centralized planning and decision making more than providing a lot of options or 'letting the market decide'. The 'liberal' model of governance (in the contemporary, not the classical, sense) isn't about providing "every possible [choice] imaginable" - in the political sense, that would entail weak federal control and much more power at the state and local level.nd she feels stuck
and trapped, unable to stop the wheels of time from taking away her faculties one by one.
She could not live alone anymore so we began steps toward selling her house and packing up her things. Most of the furniture had to be sold or given to relatives. There wasn't anywhere to put it. Once she realized this her emotions then teeter tottered between depression and anger. One day she was despondent and crying, the next she was angry and nasty to everyone around her. She just wanted to be alone and "why couldn't she just be alone", was what she said one day. This went on for quite some time. The day the house closed was the day she decided to begin accepting what had happened.
She is not all the way to acceptance and I'm not sure if she ever will be. Mostly because of her age she is ready to go. She is not mustering up the strength and desire to be completely well.
She kept saying, everything is gone, everything is gone. I paid $700 for my kitchen table (50 years ago) and it went for $100. Her bedroom suite (worth thousands) went to a neighbor for $600.
That kind of talk finally came to a minor mention here and there. She is now forcing herself to walk with a cane at times instead of just her walker. She is excited since we decided to find a casino and take her there to do the one thing she has always enjoyed. She is counting the days. Giving her that joy is giving us joy. It is giving her something to look forward to. I think the healing has begun!!
Sunday, September 2, 2012
Single and Lonely
Being a single woman of 53 years old in today's world is not a place I am finding very rewarding. I thought I would be that woman who grew old gracefully. But I find I am lonley and frustrated a good part of the time. I gradually and conveniently seemed to be being left off the invite list of any and every social gathering of my "friends" and "family". It didn't bother me at first but as time went on I felt more and more isolated, ostresized and like an outcast. I wondered to myself, "It must be awkward for these couples to sit with a single person feeling there must be nothing in common anymore to talk about and maybe they feel sorry for me and just don't know what to say".
When we were young we were all in the same boat, beginning our lives, wondering when love, marriage and children would be in our "present" instead of our future. We all socialized together, excited when a friend found love, rooting them on, supporting them. These were good times full of hopes and dreams. Then, out of the blue someone would announce they were getting a divorce. It seemed like yesterday we were reading their wedding and baby announcements.
What to do? Friends were at a loss when they were planning dinners and parties. Who should we invite? We can't invite both of them. That would be so awkward. What a predicament they have put us in. It would just be best to stay friends with just one of them or maybe neither. Were we only friends because we shared common circumstances? Yes. It seemed so.
The circle was now broken and there were single people that were a threat all of a sudden. I don't think anyone purposefully thinks that their friend of 10 or more years would threaten their marriage but survival instinct kicks in for them and they become protective of their family. It is only natural but is devastating to the newly divorced man or woman. And if they do invite their single friend it usually ends up socially awkward. They inevitably become the third wheel, the fifth wheel. Isn't that what they call it - Us?
Times goes on and we, the newly single, try to maneuver through this new life that is so foreign to us. There are more and more lonely and sad times, Christmas and holidays are the worst. We put on a happy face but feel the absence of "family". We feel out of sorts. I expressed this to a friend from church recently. She sent me an email with an article a biblical view of singleness. She is young, able to have babies, newly married and met her husband through friends. I appreciated the email but found it hard to embrace. It was about "Singleness being a gift". At first I was angry and wondered how she could possibly ask me to embrace God wanting me to be single and alone. But as I read what she sent me out of love I found I was feeling more and more peaceful.
"None of them that trust in me shall be desolate". Psalm 34:22.
This one sentence in the entire email sticks with me and helps comfort me. All I can do is trust in Him who loves me and knows my situation. His plan is the only one that matters and I embrace His will for me.
I still feel lonely sometimes. It is a work in progress to believe and embrace that God has a plan for me, will work all this out and make it good, that He is by my side through all of it and that He wants to be my husband and provide for me all that He has! I ask Him to show me how to be faithful and obedient to where he has me and to give me the strength, wisdom and power to move forward to the place he plans for me to not be alone or to accept my aloneness if it is His will for me to be alone. I ask that He fill me up and give me circumstances that help me to feel loved and to have a purpose that I feel joy from. My dream is that He replaces what the locusts have eaten as He says He will in Joel 2:25.
When we were young we were all in the same boat, beginning our lives, wondering when love, marriage and children would be in our "present" instead of our future. We all socialized together, excited when a friend found love, rooting them on, supporting them. These were good times full of hopes and dreams. Then, out of the blue someone would announce they were getting a divorce. It seemed like yesterday we were reading their wedding and baby announcements.
What to do? Friends were at a loss when they were planning dinners and parties. Who should we invite? We can't invite both of them. That would be so awkward. What a predicament they have put us in. It would just be best to stay friends with just one of them or maybe neither. Were we only friends because we shared common circumstances? Yes. It seemed so.
The circle was now broken and there were single people that were a threat all of a sudden. I don't think anyone purposefully thinks that their friend of 10 or more years would threaten their marriage but survival instinct kicks in for them and they become protective of their family. It is only natural but is devastating to the newly divorced man or woman. And if they do invite their single friend it usually ends up socially awkward. They inevitably become the third wheel, the fifth wheel. Isn't that what they call it - Us?
Times goes on and we, the newly single, try to maneuver through this new life that is so foreign to us. There are more and more lonely and sad times, Christmas and holidays are the worst. We put on a happy face but feel the absence of "family". We feel out of sorts. I expressed this to a friend from church recently. She sent me an email with an article a biblical view of singleness. She is young, able to have babies, newly married and met her husband through friends. I appreciated the email but found it hard to embrace. It was about "Singleness being a gift". At first I was angry and wondered how she could possibly ask me to embrace God wanting me to be single and alone. But as I read what she sent me out of love I found I was feeling more and more peaceful.
"None of them that trust in me shall be desolate". Psalm 34:22.
This one sentence in the entire email sticks with me and helps comfort me. All I can do is trust in Him who loves me and knows my situation. His plan is the only one that matters and I embrace His will for me.
I still feel lonely sometimes. It is a work in progress to believe and embrace that God has a plan for me, will work all this out and make it good, that He is by my side through all of it and that He wants to be my husband and provide for me all that He has! I ask Him to show me how to be faithful and obedient to where he has me and to give me the strength, wisdom and power to move forward to the place he plans for me to not be alone or to accept my aloneness if it is His will for me to be alone. I ask that He fill me up and give me circumstances that help me to feel loved and to have a purpose that I feel joy from. My dream is that He replaces what the locusts have eaten as He says He will in Joel 2:25.
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