Table 5 Grief in bereavement

Grieving relationship

“You plan these long-term things that you can do and then you realize you’re going to be doing it by yourself and that’s not what you bought into. And there’s a lot of anger. There’s a lot of anger. And I still get very angry with him for leaving me. Then you say ‘Hey, it wasn’t his choice’ that’s for sure.” ~ Lois

“I think the hardest part is I just miss talking to her. She was a very supportive mother and I really missed that. We would still visit with her, we would have a meal together and we would go to their place or she and dad would come over. And I just really miss talking to her and sharing what is going on with my life. That’s one thing for me personally.” ~ Claire

Grieving person before dementia

“Just at the anniversary of his death I realized for the first time I had stopped grieving the person that died, I had started to grieve for the person he was before he got sick. It was really, it was kind of a break point there and maybe one forgets the person that was struggling and suffering and that you had to do all these things for and remember the person you married.” ~ Lois

‘She states that now, months later she is beginning to grieve the old Bob, the good Bob, the Bob of their good years together. She has done enough grieving of the Bob of the last three years, the dementia Bob. Now it feels good to remember all the good times and look at the happy picture of the two of them, smiling and laughing together.’ - notes from an interview with Rose

Died a long time ago

“I didn’t feel like she was my Mom for a long time…. It’s more than the 10 to 11-year trauma we went through as we lost Mom slowly over ten years than it was the actual death, because the death we were ready for.” ~ Leona

“So I lost her quite some time ago. I lost her on May the 3rd, but I lost my mom and the connection, that type of connection I had, mother-daughter, that we had a long time ago.” ~ Laurie

Grieving person with dementia

“Different kinds of grieving over a period of time. And when he first died it was the person that I went to see every day and to feed and to interact with the other people in that community. It was that person and that was gradually, gradually slipping away. ~Lois