Living Loss & Chronic Sorrow: Can you grieve someone still alive?

@royce Thank you very much!

@goldie01 Well, I was going to welcome you to Mayo Clinic Connect but @royce beat me to it. Thank you Royce! You can see @goldie01 that this group has very special people in it. You’ll get lots of help!

@elizajayne, here on this forum, I want to grant you permission to ask "what about me?" You're hurting too. All medical care, your caregiving, family and friend visits, messages and focus are on your husband. Even the information about his condition, medications, appointments are about the patient. It's natural. It's normal. And it's damn hard.

I'm rambling now. My intent with this message is to say: I hear you. I see you. I'm listening.
Can I pour you a virtual cup of tea?

of course your grieving, you have lost the person u used to know, I was like that with mum when she had dementia, the way she was , and ( having worked in aged care ) knowing what was coming.

I just read this chain for the first time.

In reply to @elizajayne:

My heart goes out to you, especially because the young are not usually hit with issues like dealing with grief.

Yes, you can grieve for someone who is still alive. We grieve for what we've lost and what we will lose.

Here's one example of how we grieve for the living. My 83-year-old husband was brilliant. (Stanford PhD and Oxford post-grad. Spoke French fluently and read novels and newspapers in French, German, Spanish, Italian and English.) Now, he can no longer read anything. Alzheimer's, vascular dementia, Parkinson's and Lewy Body have taken away his executive functions and ability to control his bodily functions. So, I grieve for his losses, and I grieve for what we have lost as a married couple while appreciating what we have left.

The period I found the hardest was the middle period of Alzheimer’s when they knew enough to know what had happened and what was going to happen and were very, very angry, primarily at me, about it. Yes, I grieved, but was human enough to be guilty about being unhappy about being blamed for their problems . What helped me with that, was dividing them into 2 different parts, the husband I knew and loved and the disease which I had to deal with, which I hated. Later, when he had lost so much, in some ways, it was easier.

Yes you grieve for the living! In 2012 my wife suddenly started having problems walking. The diagnostic process took about 6 months. In January of 2013, we met with one of the neurologists who had been part of the process and we were friends with him. He came into the room and opened with "I don't know any other way to tell so here is the diagnosis. You have ALS and the average life expectancy is two years from date of diagnosis (today). Some people don't last the full 2 years and others live much longer. My wife lived until August 27, 2015. We were married nearly 51 years. I realized I could not be a good caregiver because I wasn't strong enough or capable. One of our daughters became her mother's caregiver. The ALS Association is fantastic. They helped provide many of the tools to help take care of victims of ALS. In 1939, Lou Gehrig developed ALS and died in 1941. He came to the Mayo Clinic for help and Mayo studied him. In 2023, Mayo has developed a medicine that seems to stop ALS. Before then, ALS was 100% fatal! Now is an open question!