Grief, Fatigue, Anger

Grief, fatigue, and anger. A heavy trio of intense feeling. One with which I am now very familiar. But I wasn’t so much a while back.

A year ago a shift occurred in my understanding of these emotions, feelings that I kept rolling through in the face of Jim’s dementia. It was a quiet shift, unnoticed by others. But, to me, it was so large that I felt as if a weight had rolled off of me, softening my judgment of myself.

I was at the lakefront, walking in snow, in mid-afternoon. It was deeply cold but bright and sunny, the kind of day that pulls Midwesterners out of our homes in winter, into the outdoors. I was impressed with the beauty of the snow blowing over the sand, and the lovely swirling patterns etched into both by the wind.

Inside, I was miserable. I ached with fatigue, grief, and anger, and felt buffeted by wave after wave of these powerful emotions, as I had for a long time.

At this time, the early winter of 2022, I’d been coping with Jim’s cognitive losses for well over two years. I was not a newcomer to caregiving, or to Alzheimer’s Disease, or to the demands that dementia puts on patient, spouse, family, and friends.

My grief, fatigue, and anger were present, to one degree or another, everyday.

I was weary of my emotions and baffled by their intensity. Daily I struggled to cope with the loss of my husband–my best friend and partner–and our marriage, his growing needs for assistance and care, the loss of my writing, and my skyrocketing responsibility for every detail of our lives.

I know now that at that moment, at the lakefront, in cold wind and bright sun, I had met the first wall, for me, of this disease. I had had it, and I turned away from the lake and the wind toward the west where the weather was calmer, and sought inwardly for an answer.

I received one.

A voice within stated, you are experiencing great and multiple losses and thus grieving, adapting to new roles and demands nearly everyday and so exhausted, struggling to maintain your own work, your own life, in the midst of this, and angry that your needs, legitimate and meaningful, are not being met.

Grief, exhaustion, and anger.

How not?

At that moment, hearing this kind and matter of fact voice within describe my reactions to the changes taking place in my life calmed me.

Tremendously.

I remember thinking, what an amazing insight! Perhaps, perhaps not.

But for those of us in the thick of fighting any battle, in the trenches, especially if we are a person who has a long history of asking a lot out of herself and putting up with little in return, it can be hard to see the toll that a situation is taking on us.

When we can clearly see what we are up against, what we are fighting and struggling with, we have won half the battle: we can finally see things for what they are.

In hindsight, this might appear obvious, and we might even feel a bit foolish. Don’t indulge that voice; the smoke, noise, and strain of battle obfuscates all. Slow down, reflect, see.

And always, respect yourself and what you face. If you feel overwhelmed, it is nearly always for a good reason. We cannot begin to cope effectively with problems until we can step back, observe, and see them clearly.