I never or rarely asked for help when my child was dying. And after she was gone, I really turned within as others turned away from me. No one knows what to do with a grieving parent.
When my husband got his fatal diagnosis some twenty years later, I once again rarely asked for help. We were proud people, raised to be strong and able to rise to any occasion.
I have become a writer and am now making these little videos. Alone. Lori Lothian has helped me to get started. But I still am loathe to ask for help.
Why is asking for help so hard? In my independence I have pushed away people that might have helped me. In my pride I isolated myself.
But the light of awareness is still on. I just turned on Dr. Oz and Kimberly Williams was talking about her mother’s dementia. She said her father became a mere shadow of himself while he determinedly cared for her. Wow. I know the feeling. I know the feeling.
And now a friend of mine has learned her husband has dementia. Caregivers go through hell. We should learn to ask for help because people want to give it. But we pull back, not wanting to bother people. That was my excuse. I didn’t want to bother people with my grieving.
When I wrote of it in Yahoo groups I was often pushed aside in favor of advaitic discussions that bordered on ridiculous. I sat alone and cried. And now, for what it’s worth, I would like to give them all a giant raspberry. They didn’t know. They just thought they knew.
Love alone knows. And it rarely goes around explaining itself. It is too busy being what it does best. Loving.
Vicki Woodyard
God bless you Vicky for your honest words that tell all. I still read your blog and garner great strength from it. You might remember me. We had a few exchanges last year. It’s going on 12 years that I’ve cared for my mother with Dementia by myself. One does, as you say, become a shadow. Love alone does know. It’s the only thing possible that can carry us through.
Yes, I do remember you, Rachel. One’s life changes and the doorway home forever seems impossible to reach. There is a loneliness of the soul that cannot be quenched by anything but awareness and there is a discreet quantity of that because we use our energy incorrectly. These words I type to you are not coming from me at all, but from a reality I cannot ever approach.