🌿 CHAPTER 6 — The Final Months

 

This is the chapter I write with the most care.

 

In Jackie’s final months, time became a strange mixture of tenderness and fear.

 

Strangely, given that this was a dementia journey, she retained a lot of mental capacity.  She made me aware that she wanted me to push her in her wheelchair for long distances - sometimes up to 10k.  And she would point the direction in which she wanted to go.

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She insisted on watching the tv programme Ted Lasso, over and over, demanding to go back to series 1, episode 1, and she would insist on me sitting beside the hospital style bed I purchased, holding her hand.

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Amazingly she kept doing jigsaws on her iPad, though I often had to help her.  And she kept doing them right up to the day before she died.

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There were many moments of clarity. She seemed to understand when I talked about the family or the news headlines.

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But there were long periods of decline that weighed heavily on me.

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Sometimes I struggled with friends and family who, although well meaning, would criticise my care.  They only saw her occasionally and I had to decide what to do, every hour of every day.

 

I don’t share every detail—some things belong to Jackie, and some to me—but I will share this:

 

When the end came, it was quiet.

Soft.

Still.

A closing of a long, painful, and beautiful chapter of our shared life.

 

If you are in these months now:

please be gentle with yourself.

Allow help.

Rest when you can.

And know that love continues even when memory fades.

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Next: Chapter 7 - The Funeral

Previous: When Things Got Harder