Dear All,
For a long time I have talked about losing Jan. Now, Jan is losing me. During my visit with her last week there were several moments, I don't know how many, when she did not know who I was while I was actually with her. And if I left for an hour or so, she forgot I was even in town seeing her. And after I left to visit my daughters living in Denver, she was angry that I never came to see her. She had no memory of my visit.
People who are wise and more experienced than I say this is part of the progression of The Disease. And, of course, they are right. But it leaves my soul in ashes. I don't know what to write because I don't know what to think or feel. Throughout all of our married togetherness, I proudly protected and nurtured Jan, and she did the same for me. There is not a “thing” that she wanted for us that I didn't get for her and it enriched our lives, and not a pain or torment that I suffered on stories or in life that she could not soothe and finally heal when I could come home to her.
When I married Jan I knew that I would never be alone, and I vowed that she would never be without me watching over her. Now there she is, still sparkling as you all remember her, yet increasingly unable to speak sentences that make any sense and leaving us for some other place.
And how do I live with a loneliness made worse because of what we once were? I am drifting without her. Drifting to what or where, I do not know. There is a sense that men have about protecting the people they most love. My list is pretty short … Jan, my two daughters, my granddaughter. But I could not protect Jan and now cannot stop or even slow what is going on. I feel powerless and helpless and, yes, finally, useless.
There are moments when I feel such intense failure that I simply freeze in place and wonder about just getting up and going on. Why bother? If I couldn't take care of Jan, what really was my life all about? And worse, do I really want the “rest of my life” like this? The rational, intellectual part of all of us says this is not to be taken so personally. I didn't cause this, and I am not making it worse.
But the heart of me feels that she depended on me to care and protect her, and I failed. And as I watch her slip away, there is no atonement and no forgiveness for this failure.
Here are a few glimpses from our visit. When I was in her apartment with the TV on, I would find her staring at me. This seemed odd to me, until other events helped me realize that these may have been moments when she was trying to place me.
She was concerned one night about my coming back to the assisted living facility because having a strange man in her apartment might be viewed as a bit … racy?
As I write this, I am sitting in our house in northern California. Everywhere I look inside there is Jan, in the paintings or art she picked, in the pink walls that soothe when you sit here. She drove almost two hours each way to the paint dealer, three or four times, before she found the exact mix of color she wanted for this house. They actually saved the mix formula and filed it for future reference under “Jan's Pink.”
Outside the house, it is a winter's day. There is heavy mist and fog. I can see waves close to the house, but as you look far away the world is nothingness. Out there is the unknown, the abyss. Is that where I will soon be without her?
~ Barry