Friends, Family & Carers Forum

[Smc]

@AussieRecharger @Determined @Faith-and-Hope @Shaz51 @FloatingFeather ....

Thanks to all for your support. x

Still in recovery mode here. Still not sleeping well, with an overbusy mind while awake and weird dreams when asleep. Keeping meals simple, but at least healthy-ish. My rule of thumb is "if in doubt, add veggies". But that doesn't rule out mental health "treats" like icecream, as long as they're in moderation. 😊

I found out how thinly strung I am the other day, when I did a debit card payment for the balance of Dad's funeral costs. I usually prefer to pay cash, or do a direct payment at the bank counter. Not an option for this, and doing it online had me so edgy. It's a bigger amount than I'd usually need to pay in one go, and although I know the probability of anything going wrong is small, not being able to completely rule it out had me at my limits. So I did the most sensible thing I could think of and rang the funeral home's number to double check the email address details I was sending it to, and they offered to ring me back to confirm when the payment went through at their end. Just got that call, so yay.

I'm waiting until the official death certificate comes through before considering traveling up there again. Plus our classic car will travel better in cooler weather than we've currently got... and I don't think I'd cope well with the extra stress right now anyway. I'm hoping that a few old friends may be visiting Mum at the aged care home. She got to reconnect with a few via the funeral that hadn't been in touch for a while, and I know at least one of them got in to visit her a few days later.

[Determined]

@Smc 

Continue to think of you and family 🙏 

[Shaz51]

@Smc , thinking of you lots my friend 

hello @Determined and hugs 

[Smc]

Thanks Peoples... all quiet at the moment.

Got a bit caught out yesterday. Got talking with a friend who has only known me for a few years about families and their education and jobs, then on to my own... the ceramics cert. that I did some years back now. I was getting quite wrapped up in talking about the excitement of the science+art combination that is involved in pottery, particularly the idiosyncrasies of kiln firing and glaze formulation. And then sitting in our car later waiting for Hubby to finish an errand realised I was feeling really down. Seems the conversation worked as a reminder that what I learned and achieved as a result of that course was really pretty significant; and thus having to basically abandon it is a significant loss. I guess because there's not much I can do to change the current circumstances, I try not to think about it.... but that means when it comes up right in front of me, it really hits home. Meh. 😔

Today was a garden club day, so that's a bit of self care time. Still sleeping badly... by now, I think it's mostly that broken sleep has slipped into being a pattern. Working on trying to haul it back into healthy.

[Shaz51]

sending you understanding hugs @Smc 

my cousin has just spent a week here and went back home yesterday which is 12 hours drive away 

all the things she has said to me through the week and to my mum in hospital has left me feeling down , my mum upset and my husband out of sorts because of it 

are you having broken sleep too 

[Paperdaisy]

Sending you hugs @Shaz51 💝

[Shaz51]

thank you @Paperdaisy 

when us carers are out of sorts , everything and everyone are out of sorts too 

@Smc , @Determined , @Faith-and-Hope 

[Smc]

Ow @Shaz51, that's hard on top of everything else.

Yeah, I'm waking up 3-ish in the morning and taking 2-3 hours to get back to sleep. My sleep was really messed up when things were so full on with Dad unwell, then dying, then getting the funeral organised. So much to deal with. And now my brain seems to have decided that it's "normal" pattern includes a stretch of way too wide awake in the middle of the night. If we're not careful, both Hubby and I end up drifting back to sleep when the alarm goes off. That's not too much of a problem if nothing much is planned for the morning, but we have to be very careful not to do so if there's an appointment, or we're heading into church or suchlike.

It really was the right time to let Dad go, and we'd had so many fond farewells and worked through so much grief already, it feels more like a sad but "right" resolution of that grief. Sometimes I'm a bit sad, but mostly grateful for the good times and good memories... But I am seriously exhausted. To do everything that needed to happen, and to spend time with some important-to-us people in the middle of it all meant pushing a lot harder than I usually would. I'm aware that my brain chemistry misinterprets "busy" as "crisis", and kicks into an adrenaline driven "push through until you get out the other side" mode, but that's physically expensive. It just takes out a lot of reserves, and it may take a bit longer yet to rebuild them. Meanwhile, smaller stressors like the conversation that nudged into painful territory pull a bit more out of the emotional energy bank, and that means it takes that bit longer to recover.

[Determined]

"when us carers are out of sorts , everything and everyone are out of sorts too"

Yep, that about sums it up. 

[Determined]

@Smc  ❤️‍🩹🙏