“When I was younger, so much younger than today,
I never needed anybody’s help in anyway.
But now these days are gone, I’m not so self assured,
Now I find I’ve changed my mind, I’ve opened up the doors.Help me if you can, I’m feeling down
And I do appreciate you being ’round.
Help me get my feet back on the ground,
Won’t you please, please help me?” Beatles, “Help”
In today’s Dear Prudence column we read this question:
Dear Prudence,
I am in my early 50s, and almost a decade ago my husband suffered a traumatic brain hemorrhage, which left him with the mental capacity of a perpetual 11-year-old. I am the center of his universe, and not in a good way. I work part time, and when I go out he’s afraid I’m leaving him. We haven’t had a husband-and-wife relationship since his injury. We are more like mother and child. I miss kissing, touching, and sex. Counseling wasn’t helpful; I was advised to get out more. My children are in their mid-20s, and if I left my husband he would become their problem, which isn’t fair. Is it wrong for me to find a man for adult companionship and sex? I don’t think I can do this for another 20-plus years.
—Lonely
Prudie answers by supporting her to move on. She cites the recent Washington Post article about Robert Melton and his wife who divorced him in order to remarry, while remaining the primary caregiver for her debilitated ex-husband. In that piece, the wife genuinely wrestles with breaking her vow of “in sickness and in health” to her first husband, and overall, she and the author of the piece say that they are reinterpreting the vow and giving that vow new meaning.
Again, let me first say, I err on the side of compassion. If either of these women were my friend, I would whole-heartedly want to support them in both honoring their vows to their debilitated spouse but also wanting them to be happy. Having a spouse who changes physically, mentally and emotionally in ways that are irreversible is not something I have experienced, but through many years in hospice have observed to be gut-wrenching and full of sacrifices. Change is not easy. Vows are not easy.
And so I come back to some core questions:
Why do we make vows in the first place? And why do we make them to mortals who inevitably change or as Shakespeare un-romantically says, “rot?”
How do we balance personal happiness or fulfillment with commitment?
I ask, because if you are in a committed relationship, rest assured that you and he/she will AGE! At some point, either you or he/she will be caring for the other or being cared for. In 2011, the National Family Caregivers Association’s Caregiving Statistics, reported that more than 65 million people, 29% of the U.S. population, provided care for a chronically ill or disabled person. Most of those were spouses caring for spouses. The average time span of care giving is 5 plus years.
At some point, we may all look at our spouses and think, “This is not the guy or gal I married!” (and of course vice versa!) What then? Since I started with the Beatles, might as well end there…
“Will you still need me? Will you still feed me, when I’m 64 (or 74 or 84 or 94!?”
Categories: Aging, Disability, Death, Dying, Marriage
Imagined letter to Prudence: “I sorry, my letter short. I got brain damage from stroke. I lost job and friends and can’t talk much. Home is all I have. Now my wife want divorce, said she needs love from another man. What do I do?”
Maybe we (including hospice) needs to find better solutions for care-givers than “you just need to stick it out no matter how miserable you are and how long the next 20 years are going to be.” She is clearly someone in pain . What the people in the Post story did was incredibly loving and compassionate and, they argue, consistent with their vows to love, honor, and cherish.
I just wonder too about the pain of the person with possibly fragmentary dementia who cannot speak for him or herself.
OTOH, would a person with dementia feel the loss of something he now can no longer remember and has to be reminded of? In the case of the WaPo story, his wife and children are still very much involved in his life and it’s unclear how much he remembers of his life before he lived in assisted living.
For what it’s worth, this issue is explored (but not resolved) in the 1/23/12 House episode “Better Half.” (The episode will not become available on the web until 1/31, I think.)
Nobody really, thank you!
I have close friends who fifteen years ago experienced a major tragedy in their family life when the husband had a cerebral aneurysm (aged 35) leaving him with short term memory loss.
He lives in accommodation with a small number of other adults who have an acquired brain injury. He can recall significant events (but not all) from his life prior to the aneurysm, but has no memory of what happened in the past five minutes.
His wife (and daughter) have faithfully visited him each month; travelling long distances to stay connected. He knows them and is enormously proud of them.
His wife, with the greatest anguish, ended their marriage and is now remarried. It was an indescribably difficult decision she made.
She did not wish that her (former) husband know of her remarriage, but was persuaded by his carers that it was important for him to know of her new situation.
When I last visited him; he told me that D is now his “former” wife; I was astonished that he was able to remember this fact as most other current information is immediately lost.
How sad it is.
Thank you for sharing that story Polly. How deeply sad, for all.
I believe there needs to be some framework in which the healthy spouse remains the next of kin for the purpose of care providing but is still free to seek sexual and emotional companionship elsewhere, in a socially acceptable fashion.