So today marks exactly 3 months since my mom died.
A lot has happened in those 12 weeks. Some good; some bad.
The good, first.
I was able to sell their home without too much trouble.
I’ve been able to cancel all their accounts with relative ease. Some, truthfully, were harder to cancel than others. I’m NEVER getting a Discover Card for myself, that is for sure. Worst customer service I have ever experienced and there is still an issue 3 months on.
My stepfather, despite the second fall and subsequent re-surgery on the same broken hip that started the entire rigmarole, is doing okay in the nursing home, physically. Mentally and emotionally? Another story entirely.
Now, the bad.
My stepfather did have to have a second surgery since he re-broke his operative hip the day after my mother died.
He is failing mentally. Quickly. He repeats the same thing over and over to me when I visit. He cries often when I visit, lamenting my mother’s death. He has not accepted he will be living in the nursing facility from now on, yet. I don’t know if he ever will. Just the other day he asked if he had enough money saved so that when he “gets out maybe he can buy a little mobile home.”
It broke my heart in two when he asked that. I tried telling him he was a resident of the nursing home for the umptenth time. He cried.
The bills keep piling up. 2 surgeries; 2 multi-state ambulance transports; his care in the nursing home. It’s a lot. All their savings will be gone sooner than I think they ever expected. And they never had any kind of insurance other than Medicare. And we all know how that’s going.
For me, I am still feeling the guilt. I had a dear friend tell me, recently, something from her husband. He feels the sense of extreme guilt I am experiencing about putting them in the nursing home and then mom dying within 2 weeks, is actually my grief manifesting itself as guilt.
I think he may be right.
I carry my grief like I wear my clothing – always on me. It is a little easier, though, to get through a day without crying now. Some days I don’t cry at all. Then I lie down to go to sleep and when I say my prayers, the tears form.
I know this will pass.
Eventually.
For now, it’s just a day to day, sometime hour to hour thing.
Peggy Jaeger, Author 