There is help out there....

Sitting here, I’m thinking about all the help I received over the last few years. Not help with Pam, but help for me. Emotional help.

Help processing the emotions that come from watching the person you love spiral into an abyss. Help dealing with the ongoing loss of our plans, our hopes, and our dreams as they evaporated before our eyes. Help figuring out how to explain what was happening to our teenage grandsons. They had spent real quality time with Gmom, and now they were witnessing her decline. It was difficult for them to understand what was happening, and just as difficult to understand how it was affecting them.

Even writing about this is emotionally draining. I think I need a nap.

When Pam was diagnosed with dementia, I was completely unprepared for what lay ahead. I had no idea how much I didn’t know.

The first source of help was the Men’s Caregiver Support Group sponsored by the Alzheimer’s Association. I don’t remember how I found the group, especially because I was never much of a support group kind of guy. It wasn’t about being macho. I just wasn’t comfortable discussing touchy-feely topics with a room full of other men.

It was April 2022. There were only thirteen men in the group, plus our moderator. We were all struggling to make decisions because we knew so little about what was ahead. Yet that group proved to be enormously helpful. We learned from each other’s experiences, mistakes, fears, and victories. Every meeting was a safe place to admit what we didn’t know or to show the emotions that were quietly eating away at us.
Phil’s skill as a moderator was one of the reasons the group took on a life of its own. What began as an eight-week program sponsored by the Alzheimer’s Association is now approaching its fifth anniversary. I will be forever grateful to every man in that group. We came from very different backgrounds, but we shared one important commitment: to be open, honest, and caring with one another.

After Pam passed away, Hospice offered a bereavement support group. Unlike the caregiver group, where every spouse had dementia, this was a mixed group of men and women grieving spouses lost to many different illnesses. Some deaths came suddenly, while others followed long, difficult journeys.  Together, we worked through activities designed to help us begin processing our grief. When the eight-week program ended, none of us was quite ready to let go. We started meeting for lunch once a month, and more than a year later that tradition continues. Those lunches remind me that grief may be deeply personal, but it doesn’t have to be lonely.

At some point I decided to seek out a mental health counselor. More than eighteen months later, I still go every other week. I often find myself wondering what I’ll even talk about. Life seems…normal. So why am I here? Is this really helping?

Without fail, the conversation eventually uncovers something buried beneath the surface. A memory. A regret. A realization. Before long, there’s usually a tear or two as the magnitude of my loss comes back into focus. When the session ends, I still find myself wondering whether it helped. I don’t have an answer. Maybe healing isn’t something you notice from one appointment to the next. Maybe it’s something you only recognize when you look back over months or years.

 I could not write about the help I've received without mentioning our eldest daughter. She continues to make time to stop by every week. Sometimes it's only thirty minutes; other times she'll stay for a couple of hours. We might enjoy pancakes together, or she might simply raid the cookie jar.

Her visits have become a commitment—one she faithfully keeps. I know she's there to check on me, but I also know she's honoring her mother. Every visit reminds me that Pam's love for our family didn't end with her passing. It lives on in the quiet ways we continue to care for one another.