In the town I live in, it seems that about every 10 years a tornado comes through and causes some serious devastation. I know the sigh of relief that comes when the weather channels and local news stations show that the storm has passed and how you can finally relax as you can hear the shredding winds subside. I have driven out to the neighborhoods where the tornado has touched down and seen what is left behind. It looks like a war zone. The overall feeling that most have, is that the worst is over. For those untouched, it is over, but for those who lived through it, who were in the clutches of the storm and lived through the war zone, it isn’t over at all.
They are left to pick up the pieces of their lives that have gotten scattered about and torn apart. Some are left to also grieve someone who might have literally been pulled from their hands. There are stories here of women and children who were pulled by the tornado right out of each other’s hands. No matter how hard they tried to hang on, the storm was stronger. I can’t imagine that.
So many times, this reminds me of dealing with Alzheimer’s. No matter how hard we try to hang on to our loved ones who have this disease, they are going to be pulled out of our hands. Once our loved one has passed, in some ways the worst if over. Yet, at the same time, it is not over at all. We are left to grieve with the one we lost, but must also start to pick up the scatter remnants of what is left behind. Some of these things are physical and some are emotional.
We must pick back up the life we put on hold and pull together finances that may have been overturned. We go through belongings and figure out what to keep and what to throw away. We try to salvage anything good that we can after surviving the storm but all the while knowing that some things that are damaged, can never be fixed or fully replaced.
Alzheimer’s is the thing that PTSD is made of. It leaves us shell shocked and numb. We pull ourselves out of the storm, out of the war zone, and realized that a few years have passed us by while we were waiting out the storm or while we were in the trenches fighting the hardest battle of our lives. We walk out of it with our heads spinning wondering what just happened. We feel the need to want to go back and see what we could have done differently while at the same time not wanting to revisit any of the memories at all.
Some of you are in the trenches right now. Some of you are picking up the pieces after the storm has passed. Just know that this is how it is. This is how you handle it and this is what is normal. No matter how isolated you feel, you are not alone. You will make it through the storm and you will salvage what you can. You will find that you cherish bits and pieces of your life that might not have seemed as important as they were while you were experiencing them. You will deal with the horrors that you saw, the frustration of not being able to do more, the sadness of your loss and of decisions that you made. You will be exhausted from fighting a battle that you knew you couldn’t win or out maneuver, and you will be exhausted from fighting a beast that knows no defeat. You will be scarred; that’s ok. You will have scars that you can perfectly locate, even with your eyes closed.
You will slowly start to take off the armor that has helped you in the battle and helped you keep your chin up. You will soon notice that being on constant high alert took a greater toll than you realized. You will once again breathe, welcome conversation and happy moments back into your life. You will not be the same. You will know that the Boogie Man is real and that there are worse things in life than death. You will have survived and for a while, maybe that will be all that you feel. You won’t forget the trauma of it all but try to. The visitation and funeral are actually one of the first steps that allow you to remember the good moments. Loved ones will flood you with things you had forgotten about. It helps. Remember the one you loved and lost. Think of what they would tell you and want for you. That is real. Give them something to smile about from beyond the grave. Have stories to tell them for when you see them again. Go back and regain life and enrich the lives of those around you. And when, for no reason, you feel the tears well up in your eyes, remember that it’s ok. Love never dies and the loss is always going to be there. Miss them, cherish them and allow them to live through you by sharing your life with others. You will heal but only if you let yourself…make yourself. There is something calming about realizing that you didn’t lose it; you weren’t going crazy…you weren’t just unable to handling it correctly. The fact is, you went through or are going through a traumatic experience. When the dust has settled and you have picked up the pieces to start again, realize the mountain you just climbed. Give yourself some credit; give yourself some time and then start back into life. Make your loved one proud.
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