((moi)) I am in a reflective mode, looking back.. trying to find reasons to hold on. I have read your whole post over and over. I enjoyed it and took something new away from it each time.

Lynn's time is running out.... there is no timeline given, you can just see the decline. The heart I think, knows when that last break is coming. I think I am trying to find ways to survive his loss. I have been losing him inch by inch for so many years you would think I would be use to each new loss. Not by a long shot.....

Having him in the nursing home has been worse than anything I could have imagined. I liken it to boot camp, preparing me for the war I have to face later, life without Lynn.

Consumed with losing him, coupled with Dad's suicide... somewhere along the way I lost who I was. Not just the things I use to do, the things I use to love, but WHO I am.

Lynn's loss is tragic, heartbreaking, devastating. It is a cruel relentless disease. But I have no anger, no sense of injustice. He didn't break my heart, he is not choosing to leave me…..like Dad did.

In the years since his diagnoses, I have had to work through each stage of grief, for each new loss. A few years back, I saw that I was holding on so tight to the past, to what we had, to who WE were together.... that I was losing out on the time we had left.

That is the first time I built a window. I had closed myself in, surrounded myself in the heartache and pain for so many years that it was a very difficult window to build! But the blessings I received far outweighed the pain it caused me to create it.

Dad's suicide sealed up that window and any speck of hope or light within me.

I have been thinking and thinking since I read your story ((moi)) and I think it is time I try to build another window Thank you

Wow! I hope you are posting this in the Altzheimers forum also NikKi...it is so very heartfelt, so agonizing..and so familiar. I loved what you are teaching us about holding on to the past and losing the now. Such a lesson there for us all.

Moi

Thanks for sharing the rest of the story with us. I kept checking back to see if you'd posted it.....I had to know what happened! Like others have said many times - you should write a book. You absolutely have a special talent. Thanks for being you!