As of this writing, it has been 72 days, 10 hours and 26 minutes since I officially became a widow. I'm not counting, but my phone is. Besides, I don't like that word. After all, I don't look like a widow. Whatever a widow looks like, I am sure I'm not that. But that doesn't change the fact that I am a widow.
Twelve days prior to the time MH died, I had no idea he would have such a short time left in his life. I think about that a lot. I knew the day would come. MH was 11 years older than me. So the odds were I would outlive him. I was aware of that fact, and it whispered into my ear every now and again. I tried to prepare myself for the inevitability of it so that whenever it happened, I could just enact a plan to deal with it. My feelings about the plan (that never really existed) changed as I became a caregiver and then lived with the damage that was done to MH.
Several years before my initiation into widowhood, I took over some responsibilities because MH was no longer able to do them. I assumed responsibility for the business end of being married. When we downsized and built a home that would be easier to "age in place", I handled everything from selling our existing home, building a new home, finding temporary housing between the selling and buying, and finally moving (twice). The only pressure he had was to heal, and I was OK with that. I was happy to be confident enough to assume those responsibilities. It's not like there were any other options anyway.
So I thought I was ahead of the game, and likely was, because I already knew how to manage our lives. Two years prior, we took care of all the legal things that come into play with the death of either of us. We had a trust set up, a living will, etc. I was glad we had the conversation we did when we set up the living will because I knew exactly how he felt about living something that wasn't a quality life.
I didn't have an initial panic. I had a complex range of emotions. But I put them on the back burner because I had some things that needed to be taken care of first. Our final arrangements had been taken care of quite a while ago. So when MH died, I told the assisted living center which mortuary to call so there was little to do there. I couldn't imagine if I had had to start deciding what to do at that point. It would have been quite overwhelming.
Neither one of us wanted a service so I didn't have that to deal with. I really feel fortunate to not have to do these things at such a difficult time. My main focus was "now what?" and what does my remaining life look like?
My strongest emotion at the time was how badly I felt for MH. He didn't deserve for his life to end the way it did. It felt so cruel. There was no dignity. The delusions left him with such a distorted and false reality that he was truly tortured. I will never be able to think about his last days without it tearing my heart to pieces. The witnessing of his pain and his inability to control his actions, because he knew what he was doing, continues to be my strongest emotion. I question whether I will ever be able to manage it. Death always feels unfair, but to have so much suffering beforehand is a hell of a thing to deal with. I mourn the MH who used to be, not the one who caused me pain. In the days before he died, I was able to tell him that I forgive him for all the bad things, because I knew it wasn't him. It was a disease that was controlling him. I think we both needed that conversation, so I'm glad the opportunity arose, however brief it was.
#Final Arrangements
#Preplanning
#Forgiveness
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