Death of a Spouse

Dealing with the death of a spouse is painful. Especially after sixty years of a good strong marriage. But what if you had to wake up every day and rediscover that your husband of sixty years has died and you are just now learning about it for the first time. The shock of that first time is fresh every morning. It grabs at your heart and wrings it into a knot.

This is the place Alzeheimer's disease has brought my mother. I wish I knew how to escape. I try to avoid the subject, try diversion, find ways to make the blow poetic. Daddy’s gone fishing with his brothers in Heaven. When I try to avoid answering, “where is Daddy?” she gets angry and wants to know why I won’t answer the question. Sometimes I say, “I don’t know…” Then she goes on a search to try and find him. We are at the precarious point where she has confusion, but just enough memory and reason to insist on answers.

The best solution so far has been to give her the album of sympathy cards and obituary to let her sit and peaceful read all of the thoughts people have shared at his passing. She gets sad but the realization that everyone has acknowledged his passing and her pain helps her get through it better.  

We sit and pray together and talk about Daddy making a new home for her in Heaven with all of the family together again. God will call her when it is ready.