Yesterday I had a surprise call from the wife of my step sister. My step sis has been endearingly concerned about me for a while now, even more so since the diagnosis. They're both caring people. We ended up talking for almost 2 hours, during which she began to talk about how my relationship and feelings towards the husband must have evolved over the past decade of his health crisis and dementia. Thinking about how strange the last decade with him was I responded with It was interesting... and lovely. And, as I typically do, I carefully chose those words with intent for accuracy and honesty and she responded in turn with a big response. I didn't think those two words were remarkable in any way, just accurate but she seemed to think there was something special there and she suggested I do some writing about the last decade, so HERE I AM!! Buckle up audience. We are going for a ride.
Part 1: Interesting. Why would I choose the word interesting? Guys, I was with the husband for over 35 years. In those 35 years there were three distinct phases. The early years, the angry years (on both of our parts) and the dementia years.
In The Early Years I was deeply in love. It's been so long now that is hard to remember, but I know for sure that in those early years I felt completely safe and cared for and I was in love. Life was an adventure, we moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn to Stepford. And even though each move was his idea and his timing was the worst (He made me apartment hunt the entire last trimester of both pregnancies) I felt like those moves were his way of taking care of me. I would have stayed in the tiny apartment. It just would not have occurred to me to move until I was at my breaking point. Our tiny little one bedroom would have been insane with a baby so we got a tiny 2 bedroom, and then our tiny 2 bedroom would have been cramped with baby #2 so he told me that moving to the suburbs was just what people did when they had their second babies. I let him drag me around seeing house after house even though the only thing I wanted to focus on during that time was not being anywhere near the kind of situation that allowed the medical malpractice and disaster of my first attempt at childbirth to happen. I was laser focused on having a trauma free experience the second time around for five days a week. The other two days I was looking at houses I spent miserable in the car walking through houses I did not want to live in. I didn't even know how to look at houses. I was an apartment girl. I knew nothing about the suburbs.
When Evan came along and we hadn't found a house I had told the husband that I would not be house hunting until I stopped bleeding from the second delivery about a month later. I vowed that I would not even travel in a car for the whole month. He was so annoying to have around the house that on day 5 I pleaded with him to please return to work. He said he couldn't go back to work because the people at work would tell him to go home because his wife just had his baby so he grabbed my Dad and took him house hunting in Stepford for the day. And that is how four days later I ended up packing my 9 day old infant, and my bleeding self and my 4 year old into the car for the hour and a half long drive to Stepford to see the house that the husband thought might "be the one" (it was) against all better judgement and everything I asked for. I couldn't believe I had spent every weekend of the last trimester of both of my pregnancies looking for a new place to live. Even the real estate agents were more concerned about pregnant me that my husband and father of one kid and the child I was growing inside of myself. Also, after Evan was born, I didn't have PPD or PTSD, let alone both at the same time like I did thanks to the demon OBGYN of fleet street who butchered me and my innocence, and without the crying fits and flashbacks I could look back at the years after Marion was born and wonder how anyone could live with me and say absolutely nothing as I struggled for two and half years. I cried myself to sleep next to him in the bed for an entire year and he never said a word or reached out a hand. I got nothing. And I realized that we were walking down parallel paths, that may have been beside each other, but that he had no intention of stepping onto mine to lend a hand. I felt like me and the kids were decorative, like some possessions on a check list of things he always wanted to buy. This was the beginning of my own little pool of resentment. This was when the early years began to slowly transition into The Angry Years for me. For him the The Angry Years began quite suddenly around 3 years after the move.
The Angry Years for him didn't start right after the move. We were so busy with two kids, buying furniture, making the house our own, getting settled and making new friends (I made new friends, he didn't have any friends), and he was so busy at work where he felt important and needed because I was handling everything in the house and he thought that the only thing he needed to do was bring home the bacon, that there was no time for feelings. Until... here comes the until.. UNTIL he got angry. The man was angry 24/7 it was unfucking believable that one man could be so angry all of the time. Now, at the same time we were doing a huge renovation to our house and naturally I got pregnant a minute before the renovation started. We had agreed that 3 kids was the goal. Three kids was what I always wanted. He very thoughtfully said to me the day before I peed on the pregnancy test stick that maybe 2 kids was right for us and we shouldn't go for the third. So I chalked his bad attitude all up to stress. It wouldn't be shocking for him to be stressed to the max. We were overshooting our budget on the house, third kid on the way, etc... Living in the house while we renovated was miserable. When he was home he sucked all the air out of the room. It sucked. And then the renovation was done and our sweet baby Josh was here, he actually started making even more money so that area was all good and everything looked like it should be peaches and cream from the outside and this dude was still walking around with steam coming from his ears. He woke up angry, he left for work angry and he came back angry too late to have dinner with the family and then he angrily ate his plate of home cooked food in front of the TV until he angrily stomped up the stairs for bed and then it would start again the next day. Why didn't I leave, you may be asking. I wanted to leave and I interviewed 4 different divorce lawyers all of whom told me that he would get the children every other weekend and Wednesday nights for dinner even though he would never feed the children, change a diaper, give a bath, tuck a kid in, read a book or do any other caretaking at all. When I LEANED FORWARD AND EXPLAINED THAT HE WOULD NOT FEED THE KIDS those bastard lawyers shrugged it off and told me how many lazy dads turned into super dads after their wives left them. I couldn't get a single one to agree to force him to take the psych eval I wanted him to take. I knew there was something wrong with him. (Personally, I believe this was the beginning of his dementia journey) When I told the husband I wanted a divorce he begged me to give him another chance and I made three demands. He needed to see a therapist, probably get on some meds and manage his diabetes. He only ever did the first 2. I don't know what he talked to the therapist about but it definitely wasn't his lack of parenting skills. Nothing about that changed at home. I think he talked about work. The meds took the edge off of the anger and I looked at my little defenseless kids and decided to stay so I could protect them until they could fend for themselves as far as food was concerned and also from the anger, need be.
With 3 kids, volunteering for all the school stuff and working part time at the paper I was busy enough. Then we got utopia and I was deliriously happy up there during summers and vacations, and then I just got used to being in an unfulfilling marriage with a kind of semi-angry man, and then I agreed to move. That was so freaking stupid on my part. I had no concept of how hard it would be to resettle and start over. I had no idea how much I loved my stepford house and how much I would hate the house I live in now, and how embedded into the community I had become and how lonely I could feel. And so begins the dementia years.
The Dementia Years. Not long after moving to new town I started to notice that the husband couldn't follow story lines on TV or at the movies. I would wonder to myself how he could be functioning at work when these things were getting him confused. Originally I thought about getting a solid start in new town and rethinking about divorce a year after the move. Marion was off to college, Evan was 14 and Josh was 10 when we moved so basically old enough to demand a meal and also tell me if something awful happened. Once we were all moved in and settled in new town something strange started happening to my angry husband. Suddenly he didn't seem so angry anymore. For the longest time I completely fought it. I'd say "I can't trust that relaxed attitude. I just lived with an angry guy for 12 years. He isn't fooling me" But he just kept getting softer and softer. And there I was mired in a dozen years of pent up resentment and bitterness. It wasn't a pretty look and I am afraid the kids will recall that version of me when they look back in time.
Then I realized it might be handy to have him around while I was in grad school because then I could use him as back up even though he still never cooked or cleaned. He wasn't that same angry dude, he was getting more neutral (I thought it was neutrality, but it was actually apathy sneaking in) by the day and the kids knew how to order a pizza for delivery and to be honest with you , the first couple of times I left for grad school I paid someone to come over and spy and make meals for them. (recalling that my grad school consisted of 7 two week long intensive destination trips over the course of two years and the rest was on line) They all hated being spied on. They wanted two week take out food binges instead so I gave in. Then just as I was about to finish grad school the husband completely fell apart and I am not the type to kick a man when he is down. In 2017 when he had his first episode of heart failure one of the doctors told me that with the right medicine he could live another year or two. I told myself I could handle another year or two. I don't abandon ship, I take the high road so I took care of him for what ended up being 9 years total, 7 after his 2 year maximum life sentence, and he died 9 years to the day from when he stopped working. During that period we had to break my heart and sell utopia, where I dreamed about being the place I would grow old in, and live full time in this house and in this town that do not make me happy.
Then came mother fucking covid and it was just him and me all day every day. And he kept getting less angry. After 30 years of wedded bliss he started to thank me for the home cooked dinners. That was weird. The last couple of years a couple of times while driving him home from a long hospital stay he told me how much he appreciated how well I was taking care of him. To be frank, that was so surprising to hear that I never knew how to respond. Guys, you know me. It doesn't take a lot to satisfy this girl. I will tragically settle for crumbs. (working on that.) Can you imagine the tears that came to my eyes when this man finally gave me some appreciation? In a world where we remember the huge things that happen- the best and worst - I can tell you that I remember every single time the husband said some words of appreciation to me. It was not an everyday event.
Part 2: The LOVELY ending to our story
The part where he finally let the curtain down/took off the mask and I let go of all the bad feelings became the part that that was LOVELY. It happened gradually about 2 years into our covid lockdown. Then came the last year and a half of his life. He was so weak and so frail. Don't get me wrong, at times he was frustrating as hell insisting that he was fat (he'd squeeze his loose lifeless skin and scream PINCH AN INCH! at me) or could do things by himself when he clearly couldn't, but he needed me on a level that he would have never admitted to accepting and he let go of pretending and accepted (for the most part) my help and my directions. And he got.... nice. He'd actually smile at me and we had inside jokes again. I'd tell him about the characters from the dog park and every time I heard about something outrageous happening in the world I couldn't wait to share it with him. And there were days that we'd be sitting in front of the tv wasting the hours away and I'd have to have a talk with myself about releasing my own anger and resentment for my own good. I made myself relax and enjoy. So I tried and I did it as much as I could and somehow I got to that place. I let it go.
It seemed like this was a secret world that we were living in because I had been so resentful that it was impossible to hide, and he had been so angry and uninterested in being an emotionally attached husband for so long that we had become that couple and to be honest with you I don't think I'd believe someone who told me that things had changed. Now we were living without the bad stuff but it felt like I couldn't explain how it happened. I don't blame people, I mean , if I spend a decade telling you what an undeserving schmuck he is you're gonna be all up in your feelings and pivoting is hard. Don't I know it! I didn't have to energy to explain to my friends how his behavior and my feelings had evolved and now we were different together. I mean, I lived it and if you told me that 30 plus years into a tense marriage everything changed I would wonder how accurate that assessment was. I was feeling the kind of concern and affection one might feel for anyone who was suffering, and suddenly all the little positives from our lives together were more clear and all the negatives seemed understandable. Looking at my dying husband helped me to see the scared and unhappy little boy who grew up to be that angry man. He felt more tragic than anything else. I didn't want to see him suffer because I don't want to see anyone suffer (current white house occupant excluded) and all my energy was being directed towards getting US through his last stage which was undeniably coming sooner rather than later. In the last 6 months especially, I had two focuses: getting him to the end without unintentionally causing him harm (I so desperately needed to get through this with a clear conscience) and without stressing myself out so much that I ended up sick. (sideways glance from the current "cancer survivor" who is still recovering from her brutal freaking surgery)
So LOVELY comes into play because in relation to him, my husband of 33+ years and the father of my 3 fabulous children, I found the purely caring side of myself, let go of so much and for the first time in years was able to be with him in place of relaxation and peace without all the bad stuff that I had been clinging onto in order to protect myself from more bad stuff. I let me evolve into the caring decent human I try to be even though there was history. I was able to change with the tides, and go with the flow in a way that I, the overly cautious control freak, usually push against. I was able to get to the better place with him before he left this plane of existence and in the end (and this isn't the part that I saw coming) I am the one who is benefitting. I would have performed all the care even if I did it while resenting him and churning with old anger and resentment, but I didn't and now as the person who is left standing in the end I am the one reaping the benefits of doing all that personal healing while he was still here with me. I am the first friend to advise people to settle their differences with their dying loved ones before they die. I know it is the way to make their passing easier and I did it even though I would have never guessed it was possible for me to get to that place. I'm so proud of myself. I want to be able to say that I take care of myself as well as I take care of everyone else and this was a big deal for me. So, it was LOVELY and I am grateful that I ended up in there.