Grieving the lost spouse - Early onset Alzheimer’s caregiver

Hi. My name is Anne Dovel Morris. I cared for my first husband as he wasted away with Early Onset Alzheimer’s and passed from this life at the age of 62.

I had to do something different.

The years of full-time caregiving for my husband, Dave, with early onset Alzeimer’s, were years of sadness, trauma, uncertainty, fear, anger…name it, it was part of the daily journey.

When you are dealing with early onset Alzheimer’s, there is no possible different outcome than the progression of the disease slowly deteriorating the brain and taking with it the functions in the body that the brain controls…which is all the things.

So grieving daily is part of the deal. You can’t avoid it. In my case, my husband knew of me, and occasionally said my name. Relationally, he was gone for many years. His body remained strong until the last week, but his thinking and reasoning abilities were gone.

Grief. We talk about it and around it. We know of it. We don’t always know what to do with it or what to do with people who are experiencing it. We try to avoid it, because it hurts.

For years, I tried to stuff it down. It wasn’t until the last couple of years that I realized what I was doing. My best friend might even remember that day we were talking and I paused and said, “you know what? I think …I’m grieving. Every day. And it never feels better.”

I had never had a bad blood draw report, until I was a caregiver.

But, it wasn’t the daily grieving that was hurting me.

It was trying to avoid, hide and stuff the grieving that was hurting me. And I don’t mean just not crying. Crying isn’t always grieving.

The last year of caregiving, when I was kind of forced to get serious about what was happening to my health, I had to take some advice, and lean into the fullness of the grieving process. I had to let myself feel all the things that I didn’t want to feel. It was like leaning on a thorn, or a bunch of thorns.

And it was in that leaning and accepting, that I started to understand grieving.

Grieving is not so that you can close a chapter. Grieving is not so that you can move on. Grieving fully, will first open you up in ways you may not like, but then you have the choice in how you want to heal. You don’t move on from grief, you move differently with grief.

It’s not easy, friends. It’s not pleasant. It hurts. And it’s taken me 5 years to understand that grieving can be beautiful, healing, and restorative.

You simply cannot love or be loved, without the acceptance that grief is a part of what makes love so rich.

Hi. My name is Anne Dovel Morris. I cared for my first husband as he wasted away with Early Onset Alzheimer’s. These are some notes and reflections I’ve had since his release from this earth last summer.