For those of you who have had an experience with someone
with Alzheimer’s, you are fully aware of the toll it can take on you. I
recently saw pictures of soldiers that had been in Afghanistan; they were
before and after pictures. It was obvious that the constant worry and stress of
their situations as well as the loneliness of missing their loved ones back
home, had taken its toll on them. It reminded me a bit of what I see in the
mirror every day. I know I haven’t had to go through the horrors of what our
soldiers have gone through and I haven’t had the stress of literally fearing
for my own life on a daily basis, but in the mirror, I can see what a long
drawn out battle has done to me and the toll it has taken.
I can see it in the faces of people who are taking care of
their parents and their spouses. We are
at war; we are in a battle. We are fighting something bigger than ourselves
that we cannot defeat. Our days are long and drawn out and we are forced to do
things we never thought we could do mentally or physically. We are fighting a
disease that knows no enemies and has never been defeated. We fight to keep our
loved ones safe from harming themselves, wandering off, or simply from falling
down. We fight to keep them involved while fighting to protect their dignity.
We fight our frustrations in them not knowing who we are. We fight the urge to
argue when they want to go home even though they are already in their own home.
We fight to convince them to do the basics of daily life like changing their
clothes when they have been wearing the same clothes day after day. We fight to
keep it together when they tell us the same thing every five minutes. We fight
to not break down each time they go into the hospital to battle some other
illness that could end their lives. We fight to not give up when we are at our
wits end and the day has just begun.
We struggle daily with the guilt of our bad decisions and
letting someone else help to take care of our loved ones. We worry when we
leave them alone with caretakers that they will be watched after and cared for
and that no one will show them their own anger and frustration. At night we lie
awake and worry about the day we just had and how we will handle the next one.
We worry that we are not doing the right thing, or doing enough, or that we
might just snap under the pressure. But each day, we gear up and face the
battle. We do it to protect our loved ones. We do it because we have to and we
want to and we are scared to death not to. The toll it takes on us is great. We
can see it in the mirror. We can feel it on the inside. We know we are isolated
from many of the people we love as our lives are immersed and focused on making
the best of fighting a losing battle. As hard as we try, our minds never really
wander away from our task at hand.
Just like a soldier that comes back from war, when our loved
ones have passed away, we need time. We need time to re-adjust when it is all
over. We need time to heal, time to learn how to let go of our experience and
time to enter back into the normal thoughts of a day. We are soldiers who have
fought the good fight, to defend what we love and believe in. We are battered, shell-shocked
and tired, but in time, we will pick up the pieces and find the good to
remember and take pride in knowing that we made a difference; we did our best,
and even though probably never expressed, it was appreciated. No one can really
understand unless they have been through it. We can’t expect them too. What we
must do is continue to pursue a happy life that we know our loved ones would so
desperately want us to have. We continue
to fight this disease so that future generations do not have to fight this same
war for us all over again. We are soldiers, and we have our battle scars both inside
and out.
