Funeral finale
Susan Elkin | Alzheimer’s Blog
by Susan Elkin
4y ago
What are you supposed to feel at the funeral of a dearly beloved partner with whom you have shared over half a century of your life? Devastated, is the answer in my case. All the strength, urbane front and cheerfulness that I’ve paraded for the last three weeks suddenly evaporated as I stared weeping at the beautiful wicker coffin, topped with white lilies, which I’d chosen.  The enormity of my loss suddenly hit me like a sledge hammer and the one person who could, once, have comforted me wasn’t there. But funerals are about shared grieving, letting go – and of course, celebrating a life well ..read more
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Acquainted with Grief
Susan Elkin | Alzheimer’s Blog
by Susan Elkin
4y ago
It is now 20 days – almost three weeks –  since Nick died of Alzheimer’s on 20 August. And I find myself in the strange terra incognita of early widowhood. A few thoughts  about grief and grieving before the funeral on Thursday after which I will write a final blog. It’s a time of discovery in several ways. First, Louis Armstrong was right. It is indeed a wonderful world. Never mind scumbag politicians, silly strikes or even terrorists. The vast majority of people are astonishingly kind, caring, thoughtful and good. I have had over forty cards and letters and literally hundreds of emails and s ..read more
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Lucas Elkin: Keep calm and curry on
Susan Elkin | Alzheimer’s Blog
by Susan Elkin
4y ago
When I was a child in the early 1980s, for several years in a row we would chuck a load of camping gear in the back of the estate car and our summer holidays were two or three weeks camping down through France and back again. Great fun! In one of the early years the French dock workers in Calais decided to go on strike. The French family on the pitch next to us warned to us, and I remember my Dad tuning into obscure French radio stations to picking up news as we headed north: massive queues, no food, only one or two ferries sailing per day, disruption on an international news scale. Along with ..read more
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Carry on Dying
Susan Elkin | Alzheimer’s Blog
by Susan Elkin
4y ago
Till death us do part. That’s what we promised at St George’s Church, Forest Hill back in 1969 and we both kept that promise. Our marriage ended 50 years, five months later when Ms Alzheimer’s took her final, fatal bite last week. Nick, as most readers will know by now, died at dusk on Tuesday 20 August in Lewisham hospital. His given names were Nicholas Donald George but almost everyone, including his children, called him Nick and I’ll drop all pretence of anonymity now that he’s no longer around to have a view about it. These days, apparently, you can negotiate the cause of death with the do ..read more
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Widow in waiting
Susan Elkin | Alzheimer’s Blog
by Susan Elkin
5y ago
My Loved One has now been in palliative care for what feels like a very long time indeed. I’m writing this as the twelfth day dawns. And he’s been in hospital for nearly seven weeks. I’ve almost forgotten what normal life feels like and everyday marriage, when we talked to each other and shared things, seems about two centuries ago. I go to Lewisham hospital every day, often twice. Sometimes I’m joined by other, ever supportive, close family members but usually it’s just me. It is now four days since MLO woke in my presence or showed any sign of consciousness. He just slumbers on. He hasn’t ea ..read more
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Palliative
Susan Elkin | Alzheimer’s Blog
by Susan Elkin
5y ago
This horrible, hideous, hair-raising story is nearly over. Last Wednesday I was called into the hospital at 2.30am. I got there in 15 minutes from the moment I picked up the phone. Our two sons joined me an hour or two later. We listened at My Loved One’s bedside, tense and on tenterhooks, to ragged breathing with some longish pauses between breaths through the quiet of the night until, eventually, dawn broke over Ladywell. Various medical people came in to do checks during the long night. Once it was fully light MLO opened his eyes and then, after a while, drank a few sips of water and we rea ..read more
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Phases
Susan Elkin | Alzheimer’s Blog
by Susan Elkin
5y ago
When you are struggling with the hardest job you ever do – trying to raise a child half-decently – and you’re heading for what feels like rock bottom, there’s always someone nearby who tells you “It’s only a phase”. Well of course, those phases don’t stop with toddlerhood. They become as clear towards the Very End as they were in the cradle. Shakespeare, famously and with his usual extraordinary power of observation, puts it like this:   And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At f ..read more
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Letting Go
Susan Elkin | Alzheimer’s Blog
by Susan Elkin
5y ago
Letting go You lie, dying Inch by inch. While I am brightly, tightly alive In my rainbow summer clothes, Smelling of outdoors and real life.   Your fingers fumble, like Falstaff’s With the soft, white hospital sheet. Your lower lip trembles as you breathe softly in your deep, ever deeper, sleep.   And the gaping gulf between us continues to widen. The ship you’re aboard is  sliding slowly away from the quayside, Leaving me on dry land, alone.   I kiss you. I murmur “I love you” I stroke your head, hands and arms. I try to rouse you.   You slumber on, oblivious. Never have I felt so close to yo ..read more
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His own domain?
Susan Elkin | Alzheimer’s Blog
by Susan Elkin
5y ago
He’s coming home. Eventually. The plan is to discharge My Loved One to me now that he’s “stable” and we have, according to the consultant, to “accept this as the new baseline”. More on NHS-speak in a minute. He will sleep downstairs and be serviced by a pair of carers four times a day. They will attend to his “personal care” (thank goodness – less shit for me to deal with. Literally) and hoist him, using a bulky piece of kit which will live with us, into his wheelchair for part of the day. Then I/we shall be able to wheel him round the ground floor to the TV in the sitting room, the dining roo ..read more
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Hospital as a way of life
Susan Elkin | Alzheimer’s Blog
by Susan Elkin
5y ago
In the bed next to My Loved One, in the peaceful Lewisham Hospital top floor ward overlooking leafy Ladywell Fields, is a man I’m pretty sure is a retired clergyman. He has a Bible and BCP on his locker, visibly prays, has a loud booming voice and a wife with vicar’s wife-type social skills. Chatting to me last week she looked at MLO who was asleep as usual and, not unreasonably, asked me what his illness was. She was surprised when I told her it’s Alzheimer’s. “I hadn’t appreciated that it affects sufferers physically as well as mentally” she said. She isn’t alone.  Her husband, incidentally ..read more
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