“In our marriage, Julie always said that she would take care of the small decisions and put me in charge of the big ones. Truth is, she made all of the decisions; to begin our marriage huddled in a trailer in Fairbanks, Alaska, what schools our children should attend, where we would call home, how to decorate each of the 36 Christmas trees she put up each year and how to use our financial resources. A few years after Julie was diagnosed with early-onset Dementia/ Primary Progressive Aphasia, I knew that I finally owed her that one big decision”, Bob recalls.
Like so many spouses agonize about the decision to move their loved one into a care community and when is one of the biggest and most stressful decisions they will make during the Dementia journey. We hear statements like “I’d rather die than go to a nursing home, promise me you’ll never put me in one of those, we had to put her somewhere” and the guilt goes on and on.
For Bob, the mindset that he was doing this for his beloved wife and with her, but not to her freed him from the immense guilt and pressure that so many spouses struggle to cope with. When we marry we take vows to love, honor and cherish one another, what if these tough decisions are the fulfillment of these vows and we allow ourselves the grace to see them as such?
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