I have had less to say this year about being an Alzheimer spouse. I am not a full-time caregiver, and we are not in a crisis phase. Jeff is in stage seven of a seven-stage disease. Things happen--Sometimes he falls down, sometimes he sleeps through meals, sometimes he feels irritable and flails people off, going unshaved that day. His responses are primitive--eating motions when he expects food, he sucks his fingers, he responds in single, sometimes-intelligible words, to questions that flit through his head, posed by no one. Apart from sometimes being the feeder, my function is to keep the underwear, bedpads, wipes, and liquid soap well-stocked. I’m the sounding board for the hospice nurse when she thinks a med should be tweaked or a procedure should be changed.
I cannot help, in a way, feeling as if what I’ve done is bought back my life. And I cannot help wondering whether my choices would, from certain perspectives, seem selfish. At the same time, I’m pretty sure that the instinct to deny oneself happiness and a degree of freedom, when it is not necessary to do so, is part of a deeply ingrained cultural belief in self-flagellation...and I’m not at all sure where that instinct originates.
We have no meme to describe, simply, the social status of a person who has become--rather than a spouse--a spousal caregiver. Nevertheless I have found, in general, that people understand and support the forming of new primary relationships under such circumstances, and for that I am grateful.
I am also certain (with the same acknowledgement that the “right” choice for me happens to also be the happier choice,) that I have chosen the path that Jeff wanted me to choose. In fact, asked me to choose. I have been thinking, lately, of an organ transplant analogy. In this story, I am the organ. The former proprietor, through tragic circumstances, can no longer benefit from it, and the recipient is deserving. I can’t even write this without feeling a little stupid. At the same time, I think it’s true.
