My mother died in 1997, after fighting with cancer since about 1990. My parents must have known it was coming–although blithely, I never expected it (I was 16)–but that hasn’t helped my father move on. In the dark 1-2 years after she died, he couldn’t keep it together at all. He wasn’t the type of husband who depended on her for absolutely everything (he did his share of the housework/cooking and played an active role bringing up my brother and me), but without her presence he fell apart. He took up smoking again, went through dark depression, couldn’t hold his temper and drank too much. He couldn’t mention mum without breaking up.
Seven years later and he’s still mourning her. He hasn’t met another woman, he refuses to go to social functions even with close friends or family, and he spends less time with his old friends than he did before mum died. If he doesn’t mention mum every day, he certainly thinks about her–he cuts fresh roses each day and puts them by her picture. He will never move on.
On the up side, he’s assumed a kind of peacefulness to his sadness. He’s not angry anymore and not depressed as often. He plays lawn bowls and leaves the city each weekend and drives to our house in the south. He does gardening, fishes for crabs and spends time with mum’s sister. He’s not moving on, but at least he has a bit of dignity and calm in his life. He’s living vicariously through his sons, which puts pressure on us, but he always says he’ll ultimately be happy if we’re happy.
My dad died about 10 years ago. Mom was the shell-shocked survivor.
She was the one who managed finances and cooked; he was the wage earner, and the home handyman. We’ve managed to keep the house from falling down, but it’s not in the same shape it was when he was alive.
Mom withdrew deep within herself. She’s been depressed (finally diagnosed in February), and has cut off virtually all social contact other than her family. She had a male friend she did things with for a while, but he got married to someone else.
And now, with the severe MS she has, she lies in bed most of the time, and doesn’t do anything at all.
My mom battled cancer for a over a year before dying. She was diagnosed just as my husband and I and our newborn baby were going to start house hunting (we had been renting our parent’s basement). So we decided to stay, because I had a background as a home nurse. My father was an alcoholic, but got sober (AA) when I was 14. During my mother’s illness (he had been sober about 11 years by that time), one of my sisters predicted that he would start drinking again when mom died. I didn’t think so, though. Too many times I’d heard him say “Nothing is so bad that a drink won’t make it worse”. Well, my mom died at home. I was there, as was my dad, my husband, and our daughter (who was one and a half by then). Just after she died, dad called my sisters to tell them the news and invite them over the house. Then he called me into the kitchen. He pointed to a part bottle of whiskey we had on a shelf. “Is that all the whiskey you have?” he asked. Took me a minute to decide how to respond! “Yes, dad, that’s all”. Then he pulled out his wallet, took out a 20 dollar bill (gulp) and said “Well, you’d better send mr.norinew down to the store for more. There’s people coming that might need a drink.” Could have knocked me over with a feather! (I was one of the people that needed a drink, and you can believe I had a pretty strong one, too). Well, he stayed in the house for about 2 years, dated some; he almost got married, but it would have screwed up their social security checks for both of them. After a couple of years, he moved to Florida, because the Maryland cold was getting hard on the arthritis in his back. He dated quite a bit, and had lots of friends. He never remarried, but when he died of emphysemia just over a year ago, he was surrounded by friends.
Mother died when they were both 87. Dad is 90 now and has been looking for another partner for most of those three years. He is getting married this month to a gal that is exactly 1 year to the day older than I am. Most people think she is after his money. Should be interesting. :eek:
My Mom died back in 1990, two years after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s. She got sick quickly, then lingered on and on, so that we all felt a sense of relief when she finally passed on. Daddy said that, although in her ill state she was no longer “wife and companion” to him (hell, she’d been his best friend), at least she had been “still there”. We (5 kids) were worried that Daddy would take up drinking again - he’d been sober over 20 years - but miraculously, he didn’t.
The first year, like a lot of folks do, he kind of went through the motions of living. He continued to work, go to church, kept up with the housework and such, like a robot.
Then he took up acrylic painting. He painted. And he painted. And he painted. His first paintings were angry, red, with swirls of orange and yellow; it was as though he was pouring out his fury onto the canvas. He kept on painting. Slowly he began to introduce blues, purples, greens into the paintings. I have one of these "in-between"s on my wall. It begins to seem like cool waters are assauging the fiery grief. Then one day, he painted the calmest … coolest… soft blues and whites like a still ocean.
Then he quit. Ha! Then he started going out to play music with friends, bought a motorcycle, started riding this motorcycle from North Mississippi to New Orleans. He met a lady in New Orleans who was a friend of my sister;he moved in with her in a 'burb there where he tends the garden and does fun stuff like caligraphy and woodworking. Altho he will get sentimental now and then about Mother, he’s very happy with his lady friend and I’m very grateful that they are together.
My mother died in 1985, of cancer. My dad, a “functional” alcoholic (meaning he only drank at home after work, and never missed any function due to his drinking) became depressed and a dysfunctional alcoholic shortly after her death. This lasted for about a year and a half, and after seeing a doctor at our insistence, he just decided to get well. He quit drinking cold turkey, and his depression just seemed to go away (I don’t think he ever took anything for it) after that.
I still wonder what that doctor said that got his attention. He is now 78 and doing great.
