It’s my private pain, I avow. It feels a little unseemly to be airing it so publicly.
I’ve admitted to oversharing. This daily note-taking and sending it out to all of you – isn’t that major information-overload?
It has also felt like I was invading Burt’s privacy. He’s not sharing the intimate details of his illness. I am.
Do I write for myself and leave the pages open so you can get a peek? Am I talking in order to be helpful to others going through this? Am I chronicling to relieve my pain? To elicit sympathy or advice or sympathy and advice?
It is all those things. I am a writer. This private pain is my public subject.
I have no new insights or anecdotes [well, save one] into the intricacy of our lives.
Actually, now that I used that word, intricacy, that is my new insight.
Dementia is a complication. It alters the dynamics of your relationship. It changes the household economy [think Jane Austen, not just pocketbook, although pocketbooks will be strained]. Caregiving makes life a challenge that it may not have otherwise been.
The anecdote emerges from my focus yesterday to stay by Burt’s side and listen. That yielded this mini-gem of dialog:
“All the stations have cars… er cranes, did you know that?” I did not, I answer. “I didn’t know that til today,” he says.
this is our life 