When a Spouse Becomes a Caregiver Eugene-Springfield, Oregon

A Personal Experience

My own marriage fell into the ‘one, two… you’ statistic of one out of three marriages ends up in divorce. When I was done grieving this loss, I took a moment to look at my ex-husband’s family’s history and took a big sigh of relief. His grandmother, uncle and now mother, all suffered from one of the worst forms of Dementia. A heavy burden had been avoided.

I witnessed my ex mother-in-law, who was a fashionable social butterfly, losing first, her ability to talk and understand spoken words and, later, the ability to walk, dress and feed herself. The last time I saw her, she was sitting in a wheelchair looking at nothing in particular, wearing a ”comfortable” sweat suit, something she would never wear even in the privacy of her home.

Family Memories

For Better, Yes. For Worse, Maybe

“Sometimes”, she said so very quietly that I had to lean forward to hear her, “sometimes I hate him”.

I am sitting with Judy at the dining table while Bill, her husband, is kept busy in the living room by their adult granddaughter. She is telling me about their early life, the better times: where Bill worked, their kids, where they lived, his hobbies. Slowly, as she is getting more comfortable with me, the conversation shifts; Judy leans forward, holding her hands tight, her voice getting quieter and her eyes looking down as if she is ashamed of what she is sharing with me, a stranger.

“I have to hide his clothes as he gets up in the morning and takes all of his shirts and pants out of the closet but can’t decide what to wear. When he needs to go to the bathroom, he doesn’t know where it is and I need to give him specific directions, even if he went just an hour earlier.”

She pauses, smiles, and continues “I know I am a neat freak, but he moves things around the house all the time and I have to look for them. One day he went out for a walk and a neighbor found him walking around, clearly lost.” By now tears are coming down her cheeks. “I can’t even take a half hour nap as he always needs something from me, or just wants to make sure I am around.”

And this is when she whispered in a voice I could barely hear “Sometimes, I hate him”. She then pulled herself together and adds, “We’ve been married for almost sixty years. We had good life together and I know I should love him and take care of him now that we are at the ‘worse’ part. But I am exhausted, I don’t get any sleep at night or rest during the day, I get agitated and impatient and I don’t know how much longer I could do this. Does it make me a bad person?”

This is a Reality

When my generation marries, only 66% of us will stay together all the way to the good, or not so good, end. My parents’ generation stayed married through thick and thin, the good, bad and the ugly. When you stay together all the way to the end, there is a greater chance that one of you will become dependent and the other as a caregiver. It can be very challenging to change your role from a Spouse to a Caregiver. It is a job for which most people have no training. Like any job, you want to improve your knowledge and develop skills to allow you to be good at what you do. And, no less important, you need to take time off, go on vacation to allow you to re-charge.

What Judy expressed, as shocking as it may sound to some, is more common than you may think. It is only one of the wide range of emotions a spouse-turned-caregiver may go through. And contrary to what many may think, it is healthy to express these emotions rather than to bottle them up inside. It was the first step Judy took to recognize that her job as caregiver was a job too big for her to handle by herself.

There are many ways to care for a loved one. One way is to be a full or part time caregiver at their home or yours. Another way is to find a good senior care community that would provide the needed care. There are many good reasons to keep the person in their home, while there are other reasons that may outweigh this and make it beneficial to move the person to a senior care community.

Let us help you start the conversation that addresses that difficult decision and explore different solutions to your own unique situation.