If they had lived my children would be middle aged bordering on old by now.
It’s a pretty weird thought. In my head they are still young though I
remember that when my son got to 50 I said, "It’s downhill all the way from here."
And then we both laughed.
It’s not funny any more but neither is it desperate.
I had my babies, raised them , watched them grow into independent adults and then lost them.
I don’t know anyone else this has happened to so I don’t know how other people deal with it.
Here in Cornwall everyone knows anyway....there’s no point in skirting round it.
My daughter died of meningitis. My son came with me to her funeral.
He died the year after of a heart attack. . He was fifty. she was forty six.
At least I had the joy of rearing them....as well as the angst when they reached their teen years.
But I do still miss them . And trying to explain their loss to people who don’t know me has tempted me to make up daft cover stories at times... it would be easier than the truth.....that there is no rational explanation for what happened to them.
Both of my husbands died too...death is not something to fear but I don’t wish for it either.
I mostly enjoy my life. I don’t get depressed, I have things to look forward to. My old friends who know my story make sure that I don’t feel too solitary.
All of their visits cheer me but I’m still glad when they depart.
Living alone has made me very selfish. I eat and drink what I want...even if it’s bad for me.
I watch rubbish on the television and I keep in touch with friends made on cruises as well as those from years ago.
I don’t do much church work these days but then as I keep pointing out, I am retired!
The fact that I don’t look over eighty does help....people don’t approach me with an obvious caring face on...
But my time now is clearly limited....but not my activity...I fully intend to enjoy the time I have left in reasonably good health doing all the things I dreamed of doing during my hard up years.
I don’t feel cheated...but I do miss my children. In middle age they might have become sensible. Well.......
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2 comments:
I suspect that thinking about them is bound to bring back that loss. I lost my younger sister two years ago, to Vascular Dementia. While we had not been close, we'd been in care together and had than returned home to an abusive father, and we'd suffered his anger together.
She was a special needs child and was sent to Special School because of it, so we were not schooled together. But she still managed to work, find a husband, to have to lively daughters and than be a carer in an old peoples home for over 30 years. She negotiated our older Sibling, who was living in Southampton, disabled from her nursing and lifting patients in Southampton Hospital to move to that sheltered accommodation where she worked.
Eventually, she developed macular degeneration and was made redundant from the job she loved on health and safety grounds. This broke her heart, and I am sure contributed to the eventual development of the dementia.
She was also obsessed with our Mother having left us, when I was three, and she was only 18 months. She was unable to remember anything about her, and always wanted to find her and did some really difficult things due to it. One was going onto a TV programme (Missing) trying to find her, 50 years after she left. She didn't consult me about it and I only found out by watching the programme live one evening. I was very disappointed about that and found it hard to be reconciled, but she chose to cut me off, rather than speak to me. She died before we could be reconciled and I found that the hardest part of the story.
Thankfully, both of my children are alive and well. I don't see them often, but it is enough that we maintain contact, and I have not been ostracised by either of them.
We have contact as well with the five grand children and hopefully those relationships will continue even when we are doddery and ready for the care home.
I lost a very good friend in 2001 who was only 42 (cancer) and my former organ teacher died aged 50 in 2000. Both these events shocked me and changed my life. It didn't seem so wrong to lose my father at 74 in 1998 but nothing prepares you for loss and one is never the same afterwards.
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