Sixth stage

When you’re caring for a person with dementia, you get to repeat the five stages of grief over and over.

While your spouse is playing out his Groundhog Day, repeatedly wondering what time it is, you’re stuck in denial anger bargaining depression acceptance over and over.

It’s not just sorrow (and surprise) as a new loss inevitably appears, you get to relive the whole process of grieving.

By the time your loved one passes, you’ve mourned a myriad of griefs. And who knows what losses they’ve mourned.

All that is to say, there is another ambiguity to mix with your grief when your loved one dies. Relief.

Grief for a surviving spouse is all those stages of sad mourning plus relief.

There is relief not only for the sufferer, but also for you (me), the caregiver.

It’s the acceptance that they’ve been gone, lost to you for a long while. This final loss is an end to caregiving, not to caring. And it’s a relief, for each of you, for both of you.

Grieving is a process. It’s gradual. It has its own ebb and flow, and it takes work.