In the last twelve months I have been to four funerals, zero weddings but there's a family engagement in the planning stage.
Each month our carer group congregates to share our stories, whether as wives or mothers. The person we care for has Huntington's Disease. We share our stories, we cry together, we laugh together. Sometimes we are despondent, sometimes angry but always we battle on.
Today we supported our carer friend at the funeral service of her husband. He was just shy of seventy years. He was HD symptomatic since 2003. Many in our group have already lost a loved one to HD. I can only imagine how hard that is.
Losing your loved one is so very difficult but in a way they are lost before they physically leave us.
In a month's time Merv and I celebrate forty years of marriage. As a surprise I am creating an online photo book of our forty years. What I thought would be lovely has turned into a nightmare. To begin my project I scanned over three hundred paper photos after sifting through hundreds of photos and choosing the most memorable.
I smiled, I laughed, I winced, I cried. Hundreds of photos of my man walking, climbing, playing, laughing, working, smiling and best of all enjoying life. His memories of the past are beginning to slip away. His joy of life replaced with complacency.
He sits by me but I don't know where he is. The man I married no longer lives with me. He no longer does any of the above, except I have witnessed the occasional laughter and cheeky smile! Otherwise he has long ago deserted me. There is no looking, no searching, the man I married and loved has just gone.
The saddest thing of all is knowing he is never coming back.
