Barbara lost many things while caring for her husband. He was never someone she expected to lose.
Transcript
The issues I had more trouble with where when I was caregiving my spouse, because the losses were so different. When you’re caregiving your mom or your dad, or your aunt and your uncle, there is the recognized thing that they are going to predecease you. That’s just the way, except in unfortunate cases, that’s the way that that the world works. So, I think your nature takes over. The reasonableness, you’re taking care of somebody who’s considerably older than you are, and you can be in denial until your purple, but the fact remains they will predecease you.
When you’re caregiving your spouse, adds a whole different dimension to caregiving. You’re not just losing somebody you expect to lose, you’re losing all of the marriage stuff. You’re losing simple things like hugs and touches, being able to communicate about decisions you’re going to make, or that you should make as a couple. The pain is so different than it is when you are caregiving for a parent. So, it’s much more layered. You hurt in so many different ways. There’s an anger in caregiving a spouse that doesn’t usually exist when you’re caregiving a parent. So it’s a very complicated, very complicated series of losses.
There’s this… If you’re talking about being really angry at your spouse because he’s got arthritis or heart problems or he’s whatever, you’re not being a good spouse. You’re just not. You’re there in sickness and in health. Suck it up. Just do it. And yeah, it leaves you very, very isolated with all of your feelings about caregiving a spouse.
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