Thursday, September 30, 2010
Friday, September 24, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
Ways to honor your parent's legacy By Annette Gonzalez
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
I want to continue my family’s legacy, to honor my parents and the lives they lead. In order to do this, it is important to keep their memory alive.
Here are a few suggestions to honor your parent's legacy:
o Maintain an intergenerational link. Your children should hear stories about their grandparents and great-grandparents. They should experience the food of their ancestors. You should share pictures from the past. You should discuss how their ancestors arrived in this country
o Record an oral history of your family and provide it to your children
o Think about a saying or advice your parents once gave you and share it with your children or your family
o Carry a memento of your parent(s). This will keep your loved one close to your heart
I feel it is my responsibility, being the eldest in my family, to make sure the generational link is never severed.
http://orphanat60.blogspot.com
Ways to release the pain of losing a loved one. by Annette Gonzalez
Sunday, November 8, 2009
When I tell people I am writing and speaking about the death of my parents, they say “how brave of you” or “you have such courage to dig down into those feelings of grief”. I don’t see myself as being brave or courageous. I had to do something to honor their memory, fill the hole in my heart, and help others who feel or have felt the same kind of grief.I did not know that writing and/or speaking about my feelings would be such a wonderful outlet for the great depth of pain I was feeling. I grieved and still grieve over the loss of my parents. Writing about my parents when they were ill and dying and about my grief after their deaths has been therapeutic. Every time I have a memory, I write about it and immediately I experience a release from my pain. When I speak about my parents it keeps their memory alive.
I encourage anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one to journal your feelings, speak about your feelings to family or friends, and remember your loved one in some special way
http://orphanat60.blogspot.com
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Adult Orphans
I just posted this on a forum I found early this morning, it was in response to the topic of caregivers, who have lost both their parents, and now feel like adult orphans.
My father passed away in 1969, I was 17. The past 4 1/2 years, I was my mom's full-time caregiver as she advanced through the stages of dementia. She passed away the 16th of last month. It is a peculiar feeling to no longer have at least one parent here, even one that did not define what a parent actually is because of an illness, but none the less they were still your parent, and still present. I have spent all this time quite isolated and alone as I have cared for her. My husband has been the only real constant help or support, but he had to be gone most of the time to work. I had no help from brother(s), both sisters died years ago. Now, with mom gone, and my new life, or is it my old life, is unfolding each day, I am feeling more alone then before, abandoned even by the hospice people who didn't even offer grief support counseling. I have done, and continue to do, a lot of writing since 2006. I have 3 blog sites I work on about caregiving, during and after it, 3 twitter accounts, a facebook, I am involved with another caregiving website, and I have my own Blog Talk Radio show on caregiving, so these things have been my "salvation" through the years of caregiving. They help to keep my busy now too, but there is a gap, a incompleteness, a void, in my day, my moments of the day. Their is so little offered or even written about life after caregiving. A fish out of water? A fish swimming up stream, against the current? It is a struggle each day no matter how I try to define it. Going places, doing things with my husband or others, foreign to me, hard to relax, hard to enjoy them. In the back of my mind is always, I have to get back, have to do this, have to do that...for mom. Hard to reprogram! So, I continue to write, to blog to share, just like I have been doing these past years, but can't find that place in it all that really helps me enter into my new life with strength and confidence...at least not yet.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Language by Denise Brown
Denise on September 14th, 2010
When you find yourself in caregiving, you may feel like you’ve moved to another country. You just don’t speak or understand this language.
And, then caregiving ends. Overnight, you wake up in yet another country. It all looks different. It all sounds different. It’s another new language.It’s just awful.
When you wake up in a new country, how do you manage?
Manage by keeping the familiar—those who support and love you; that which brings you comfort and peace; thoughts which calm and quiet you.
Learning a new language can be complicated. Sometimes, it’s as simple as knowing you will because you already did.
With time, you will speak fluidly the language of life.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Sunday at Home…..9-12-10
Isolation and loneliness just don’t seem to get eradicated; they even intensify in some instances, once your caree is gone. There is even a greater sense of being abandoned. I talked about on my radio show how I didn’t belong anywhere as a caregiver before I got involved with caregiving.com. Now that I am no longer a caregiver that sense of not belonging is again plaguing me. If I am not able to leave the house and go somewhere, which is most days, then I am alone, all day and often in the evenings. Alone in mom’s house with memories of mom all around. Tomorrow it will be 4 weeks since mom passed. How fast these weeks have gone but yet it seems like she just left today. I am having to find my own way through this process of grief and sorrow, loneliness and loss. The hospice people basically left me high and dry, no support for me once mom was gone. The people of my church are awesome but they live an hour or more from me. My family is still the same, uninvolved. So, I have to figure out each day, each moment sometimes, what will I do, how do I get through, and somehow I do…but only with His grace for sure. Miss you mom….
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