I’ve been lost to grief for the last several months - when I realised, finally, irrevocably, that my wife was never going to recover from the mental straitjacket she is now in. That the woman I married fifteen years ago no longer exists.
Backstory: She went to hospital one day in March last year, she had hyponatremia (low sodium) and they gave her saline solution roughly twice as fast as recommended - they wanted to turn beds you see, like a restaurant turns tables, hospitals are run for profit. She went into a coma, resurfaced a couple of days later, and then they discharged her as fast as humanly possible - oh you can’t walk now, but you’ll be fine in a week or so, they lied. I used to think that having “excellent” insurance would cover me and mine, but it’s not the case. Insurance just pays when something is available to be paid for. When the hospital decide their time is more important than your life, well, you lose. And you lose big.
Since then, and never once before, she has had a smorgasbord of mental problems, but since January, it’s mainly been crippling fear and paranoia. She thought people were in the house, that the dog was a robot spy, that I was dead and replaced by an AI. She’s convinced she’s going to be dismembered by “them” at night, and that she’ll be dragged off to “a hearing” to determine her fate. She is not getting better.
I have lost the light of my life, and in doing so, feel lost myself. Purposeless. Dead-man-walking. I break down in tears, uncontrollably, randomly. I sometimes wish I were dead, except then who would look after our son ? So I live. I have learnt to live with overwhelming sadness, to present a mask to the world, to cope. Badly, but better than not being there for him at all.
I phone her, every night. Now that she’s been moved closer (30 mins away, she used to be 3 hours away) it’s possible to visit in the week - in fact I’ll be going tonight, not just at weekends. But that just rips open the suppurating wound and adds a fresh layer of salt. To see her. Like this. A woman who did a joint JD/MBA, reduced to this.
I have tried therapy to try and sort myself out, but what use is therapy against the harsh reality of what has happened, what will continue to happen, what cannot be escaped from. What use is talking against brain damage ? How does talking about it change reality. It can’t. It won’t. What has been written on steel cannot be erased, consequences, like us, be damned.
I will not desert my wife - no matter what hardship I feel, for her it is thousands of times worse. She has periods of lucidity when she knows the agony of all she has lost, when she talks, wistfully, of how she always saw herself growing old together, bickering like only old, married couples do - and not locked on a ward put on a cocktail of drugs that keep her sleepy and docile. I am her only contact with the outside world, and she needs that. She will have it. So I force a brave cheer, and talk to her for the allotted 30 minutes, and her life is not quite so dreadful for that short period.
This is what I can do, but the toll is terrible. I walk out of that pleasant ward with my soul in ribbons, trying to pull myself together for the short but intense drive home. It is what I can do, it is not enough, but it is what I can do for her.
I am flying my son to the UK this weekend because he deserves some time in a house that isn’t as dreary and doom-laden as his own. I can’t stay because I need to be near her so she doesn't think I've left her. I can't take the time off work anyway because they’re busy, and I need my job to fund her healthcare, so I’ll catch the next flight back and repeat the task in a couple of weeks. It’s a long flight, but he’s looking forward to the adventure. For me, it’s just another nail in the coffin - not being able to provide for him as I ought to be able to, but misery is not a zero-sum game, he’ll enjoy the time away, and that is enough.
Grief is heavier than a mountain, it sits on your shoulders, and weighs you down in everything you do, or fail to do. Grief that won’t fade with time, that is renewed each evening, and twice per week in person, is not anything I would wish on my worst enemy. I sincerely hope no-one that has read this far (or anyone else for that matter) ever suffers like she, or like me.