retireddaze

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An acquaintance of mine died suddenly. He was barely an acquaintance but was the husband of a close friend of my sister. I had met him few times. What I had in common with him was that we had both lost our wives. My wife died in March. His wife died in April. I heard thru my sister that he was having a very difficult time and I certainly identified with that. He was dead for three days and was starting to decompose. Another reminder of the end was that I just saw a death notice for a priest that taught me. I remember him as a charismatic young priest. He had been chosen as a rising star by the diocese and was sent to Rome to complete his seminary and be ordained. His classes were good and thought provoking. The picture in the death notice was surprising in that he didn’t have a color on, but instead a regular business suit. I think he stayed a priest until the end. The one thing that finally hit me was that he was six years older than I am. He died at 87 and was certainly not a young man any more. I couldn’t believe he was that old. I still think of him as a young man, but sometimes I think of myself that way too. The reality is that I am not.
At this time death doesn’t frighten me. However that’s easy to say when I am feeling healthy. I just turned 81. When I was in my 20s that was an ancient age. It still is. My Dad died at 48. His dad died in his early 50s. My Mom’s dad died suddenly at 72. I found out recently that it was one of my cousins that found him. I don’t want that to happen to me. I don’t want my sons or my grandchildren to discover me.
However that wont be my choice. No one knows when the end will happen. My son once went to a conference in New York for an actuary exam. One of the things he told me was that the presenter said that for every alpha beginning there is a zeta ending and that is the ultimate reality. I think my father’s death was the first time I realized this and then the deaths of my mother, sister and brother-in-law happened. They were all difficult. However the loss of my wife was overwhelming. The pain is still very intense—much more so than the others. The grief counselor said that we all have a fantasy of dying in bed together and when that doesn’t happen the one left alone has to face a difficult reality alone. The nice fantasy of dying in bed together is just that — a fantasy. Death comes when it wants to, not when we decide.
There is a radio insurance commercial that is playing a lot now. It is for life insurance and tries to induce a sense of guilt if you don’t follow thru. I have that taken care of. One line that did come thru is “that everybody dies”. I think we all know that, but our sense of denial remains very strong and intact until the end. Hospice was a way to confront that.
The thing about Hospice is that it is a comfortable place to die. It is centered around death and dying. You go there and don’t really expect to leave. Marilyn was basically comatose from the evening we brought her in until she died eleven days later. I had just gone home to shave/shower and as soon as I walked in the door the phone rang to tell me she had died. I called my sons and we went to the hospice and found her in bed with a beautiful blanket. They had placed a doily that my granddaughter had made and a flower in her hand. I kissed her and began to cry as my sons did.
I always told Marilyn that she was the center of my life. At work I would hear terrible stories and see people at real crisis points in their lives. I would comfort them and offer encouragement as they were going thru this. I would praise them for the progress they were making however slight. I would then go home to Marilyn. She would always be there for me and would always make me smile. I can’t imagine what that would have been like if this had happened when the boys were young. Single parenting and trying to work sounds overwhelming. I think she could have done it. I don’t know if I could .The longer this goes on the more I realize how strong she was and how lucky I was to have her.

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Widow is such a powerful word. The image it brings up is a woman dressed in black with tears streaming down her face. The age of when it happens is also important. Women who lose their husbands young and have to still raise their children often stir pity and are offered assistance by the community. Older widows are often left alone so they often congregate together. Women can seem to gather together more easily than men. Senior centers seem to have groups of widows and divorcees and often it is hard to tell them apart. There seems to be more of these women because reality is that women usually live longer than men.
Widower is different. There are not a lot of images that come up besides that of lonely old men. There is also a difference between a young person who has lost a spouse (either thru death or divorce) and an old one. Younger men have the real possibility of starting a new relationship. Older men not so much. There are not congregates of widowers. There may be groups of men who have dinner together occasionally, but it is not the same. Family gatherings are different too. Widowers are only half a family and often feel like a fifth wheel in the presence of their loved ones. Wives can center us emotionally. When they are gone we are often lost as to what to do.
I was going to a group thru hospice that was made up of people who had lost their spouses. There were about eight women and four men. One man had lost his wife about eight years ago. He said he began going to a group like this and met another woman. After a few months they began to date and eventually moved in together. The lived together for about four years until she died a few months ago. He said he is now just where he was before. He doesn’t feel like he fits in with her family and admits he is now looking for someone to start another relationship with. This was surprising to me. The group leader said that this is often the case with men. Women tend to grieve and men tend to replace. That sounds so cold, but the loneliness is real.
We were together since 1971. After we married in 1973 I think the longest we were apart at any one time was four days. This happened during seminars I attended or business trips she was on. I remember one trip she was on that lasted about five days. She left on a Sunday and came back on a Friday. I bought flowers and put love notes around the house. Thankfully there weren’t many trips like that. We were always together. She would even want to be kissed goodbye when I went to the store.
The house is filled with memories of her. The furniture is placed where she wanted and all the furniture was chosen by her. The pictures of our life keep flashing on an Amazon device. Sometimes I think I should turn it off, but that would just be another way of losing her. I know this process takes time, but I don’t know what that means.
I have been told by everyone to wait six months to a year before making any decisions. I know that is practical advice but right now I don’t know if I will feel any different at the end of that time. I have friends and relatives to talk too. I even have a counselor now but I still have to come home to an empty house. I don’t want another person in this house so maybe this is the real truth to being a widower—It is very lonely place to be.

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This has been a difficult year. Marilyn’s illness and death were overwhelming. One of the only things to look forward to was the birth of our fifth grandchild –  a beautiful baby boy. He was a strapping 7 lbs,12 oz. His name is Brooks Bohan LeFager. When things were darkest, he was a ray of light. I talked to one of the nurses at JourneyCare about this. She said she has been a hospice nurse for over 20 years. She worked at one of the JourneyCare Hospitals in the city. It was on the grounds of a general hospital. She said their wing was directly across from the Maternity wing and she could often see the nurses holding and feeding the newborns while she was caring for the dying . She said it made clear to her the circle of life .

I guess that is true but it didn’t make this easier to go thru. I think one of the difficult things for me is that I comforted patients and their families when they were going thru this. I said the same things to them that nurses and physicians are saying to me.

What is different is that I was losing the only woman I ever loved—the center of my life. My father died when I was twenty. My mother died when I was thirty-three. Our Aunt and Uncle handled a lot of my father’s funeral and helped greatly with my mother’s. I don’t have a lot of memories of doing that. When my sister died her husband took care of the funeral.

The last six to eight months were very difficult. I lost my wife an inch at a time until the last few weeks when it really accelerated. At the end she couldn’t eat or swallow and really couldn’t communicate. She was comatose almost the entire eleven days she was in JourneyCare. I stayed with her until the end ,hoping she would briefly wake up to say goodbye, but she never did. One of the unforgettable moments occurred when my son and his wife brought the new baby into her room. They were able to lay him momentarily next to her in the hospital bed. I want to believe that she was aware of him and showed him the same immediate love she had for all of our grandchildren.

A few weeks after the funeral I was at a T-Ball game with our five y/o grand son. Brooks was also there and was beginning to get restless. His Mom comforted him and he calmed down. I went over to watch him and he smiled at me . I cant tell you what that meant . It felt initially like an immense weight was lifted and I smiled back.

I know I cant keep focusing on the past. I have all of these memories and things to remind me of Marilyn. I was in a dentist ‘s chair when all of a sudden Elton John’s song “Tiny Dancer “ came on. I almost burst into tears right there, but covered it up with a cough. I always treasured that song and associated it with Marilyn from the time we were dating. I see photographs of us with our children and grandchildren. I see pictures of our vacations and holidays. I know the memories will always be there. Hopefully they wont hurt as much in the future .

Until then I need to focus on small things like infants smiling and base hits and dance recitals and high school concerts because that is what is important right now.

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In August of 1971 I moved into an apartment with two guys I had been in school with. I had been hired to teach at Immaculata High School in Chicago. One of the guys was dating a girl who also was going to teach there. I went with him to meet her and also first met her roommate. This roommate was a lovely girl named Marilyn. Before the school year started there was going to be a Labor Day Party and camp out at a friend’s home in Round Lake. My roommates and the girls from Marilyn’s apartment were also going. It was during this party that Marilyn and I first began noticing each other. Over the next two years we dated exclusively. I broke up with her once because I didn’t think I was ready to be in that exclusive and intense of a relationship. The breakup lasted about two months. Then she and her friends were moving and I agreed to help. That night I saw her, talked to her, went out to get something, stopped at an Arthur Treachers Fish and Chips parking lot and proposed. She accepted and we were married in 1973.
This is a very brief description of the start of the most important relationship of my life. We were married for almost 53 years. She died on March 11 of 2026. I am still trying to work thru this. My life with her was filled with wondrous events. We had two sons and now have five wonderful grandchildren. When I think of our life together, I cant think of life without her. I still reach out at night for her and realize that she is not there.
The thing about long marriages is that you tend to take each other for granted because you literally become part of each other. We first lived in an apartment in Forest Park and both worked. She worked as an administrative assistant at a hospital in Chicago and I continued to teach. After teaching for three years at a Catholic High School we both realized that we would not be able to make it financially if I continued there. We both wanted a family and I needed to find a career that would support that. I was accepted into a graduate program in Social Work and she supported me. Not only did she support me, she typed all my papers and was our primary financial support during that time. After graduation I got my first real job and on the day I received my first paycheck she got pregnant. We now had three of us living in a two bedroom apartment. A year after that we bought our first home. Two years after that we decided to have another child and also were able to have a house built in the town I grew up in. Our second son was born and we lived there for 37 years. During that time we did all the things young families do from music lessons to little league to high school to college and to marriages.
As my career developed I was working more nights. I didn’t realize what that meant for her until one of my sons said in a funeral conference “My Dad didn’t get home until 7 or 8 at night. My mom had to do everything for us during that time “. The more I think of her, the more I realize all that she did. She never complained. She was always there for our children, our grandchildren and for me.
We both retired in 2013. We wanted to do thing we had put off because of our careers and family. We went to Ireland and the British isles. We spent almost a month in France. We went on a Viking cruise thru the Rhine and we had our first grandchild with promise of more to come. We decided that the house we had lived in for almost 37 years was too big and we wanted to be closer to our sons and grandchildren. In 2017 we moved to a townhouse in Cary,Il. This was almost exactly in between our sons and their families. Our life went on and three more grandchildren were born. We seemed to be in good health and had no real problems. My sons would begin to question their Mom’s memory, but I discounted that as just a minute sign of our aging. We were still active and still going for walks and still going to the gym. She was taking a dance class at least twice a month.
Our sons were getting more concerned because she had tried to get in the wrong car at least twice. I again discounted that because cars were of similar make and color.
In 2023 we would be married 50 years. She always loved to travel and see new things. We decided to splurge and go on a Mediterranean Cruise for our anniversary. It was on this cruise that I finally noticed that something was wrong. She would get lost. On field trips she would always be the last one because of her slow walking. She would get confused about where we were and thought the Mediterranean was Lake Michigan.
When we returned I contacted her primary care physician about this. We scheduled an appointment and in the appointment her MD suspected that she had had a stroke. She ordered an MRI and also a PET scan because she also suspected the start of Alzheimer’s disease.
From that time in 2023 until now it has been very difficult. We had a referral to Neurology and the first thing the Neurologist told us was that the goal of treatment was to slow the progress of the disease. She also told us that the disease has a Bell curve. Half of her patients can stay on a plateau for years and half seem to progress rapidly.
For a while we seemed to be doing OK. I would notice some memory problems and some loss in coordination. She had trouble writing her name and really couldn’t type any more, but overall I thought we were managing. Our sons saw it differently and saw her progressing. One even came with us to a neurology appointment to discuss his concerns. Both sons wanted us to move into senior living facility. They took us on a tour of one in Algonquin. I discounted it as just a place to be parked.
We were still going on walks and still going to the gym. She would still take her dance classes at least once or twice a month. On May 30, 2025 we were on the walking track at the gym. We would usually walk a mile there. . After a few laps she said she was tired and we stopped. The next day she had a bad stomachache and her BP was spiking over 200. We went to the ER and they discovered an impacted bowel. They relieved that, but from that time she seemed to increasingly get worse. She could no longer talk on the phone and would even have trouble with “facetiming” the grandchildren. She had more trouble talking and would have difficulty being understood. She began to hide things like her jewelry in the house and would forget where she put them. She was having more trouble walking and this was a concern because of the amount of stairs in the house. I began to explore assisted living facilities and accept that we would really have to move. I didn’t think this was absolutely urgent but was instead something we were moving towards.
This changed after visits with both her Primary and her Neurologist. Both said Assisted Living was probably not good enough and she needed a Memory Care placement.
Her behavior was getting more and more erratic. She would accuse me of trying to kill her and even began to open the front door and yell, “Help Me, Help Me”. I had to go to the Police Dept and write a report about what was going on .I finally accepted that she had to go to Memory Care.
On November 15 she moved into an apartment in one of the newer Memory Care facilities. She didn’t understand why she had to be there and continually said “I want to go home and see my babies”. She began having some trouble with the staff-especially when they wanted to help her get dressed or take a shower. For the first two months I was the only one to do this. She would even scream loudly even when I tried to do this. She tried to hit the staff and pull their hair. This got worse in mid January when she suddenly became incontinent. Now she was in Depends and the staff and I were continually checking her. The facility tried to increase her medication and tranquilizer to no real effect. On Feb 19 they had an ambulance take her to an ER with hopes of her being admitted to a behavioral health facility. When I got to the ER she was extremely upset. We were there for almost 7 hours before she was admitted. Her psychiatrist placed her on anti-psychotic meds and hoped to stabilize her behavior. This didn’t work and she began not eating and losing weight. The last time she was weighed she was at 109 lbs. The MD and his Nurse Practioneer called to say the agitation was not diminishing and she needed two staff members to help her walk. I would call every morning and afternoon and was told she wasn’t eating. They finally suggested a Hospice to help stabilize her . She was admitted on Feb 27 in the afternoon. She really hadn’t eaten or drank anything that day. When her dinner came I tried to help feed her. She took two bites of fish and one small bite of cake and a sip of coke , but my one son said “Dad she cant swallow”—that was the last thing she ate or drank.
The next day one of the Hospice MDs told us that late stage Alzheimer’s can progress rapidly like this and it was now a matter of days and hours before her death. She was there for 12 days. I stayed with her every night but she wasn’t ready to let go. I would go home every day to shower and shave. On March 11 I kissed her, told her I loved her and would be back before lunch. I walked in the door of our home, the phone rang, and I was told she had just died.
These last nine days are very blurry. We had to choose a funeral home and arrange for a wake and funeral.. She was buried on March 16. I am still lost. She was my life. I miss her laugh and her touch and the real common sense she had. She was the center of my life. I will always love her and she will always be my guiding light.

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It’s the day after Christmas. What I am still dealing with are the immense changes in my life. For the first time in over fifty-two years this was a Christmas without my wife. I saw her on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but my wife is really gone. She kind of knows that I’m her husband, but doesn’t know my name. When I asked her how many children we had she said “Forty Eight “. I laughed and told her I didn’t think we were that busy. She became tearful and told me that all the answers are locked up in her head and she just can’t reach them. She continues to want to leave memory care and come home. I continue to feel guilty but I know that she is where she needs to be and I really could not provide the care she needs

The whole Christmas thing was making it worse. I don’t think she really knew it was Christmas despite the decorations and the efforts of the Memory Care Staff to celebrate it with the residents. It was hard on me just to see her and see how much she has lost.

I spent time with both my sons and their families. Seeing the grandchildren’s joy with their toys and gifts was helpful, but eventually I had to come home to this very empty dry house. I was one of those guys who put up lots of decorations and outside lights and even reindeer on the lawn. My wife would always worry when I got out the ladder to decorate the roof. Even when we moved into this townhouse I would make an effort to decorate outside. We have two Christmas trees and boxes of ornaments and lights to put on them.

I didn’t put anything up this year. It just didn’t feel right without her. I think that the whole “without her” is dominating my life right now. I’ve talked to other men and women whose spouses have Alzheimer’s and it is the same story. It is losing a little bit of them each day. I keep telling myself to man up and accept this situation.

I have difficult decisions to make. I wanted to get thru Christmas before I started clearing up most of her possessions, books, and clothing. Our bedroom is still packed with her things. It is no wonder after fifty plus years of marriage. The question I keep coming back to is after I do let go, what is next?

Right now I don’t sleep in the bedroom. It doesn’t feel right. I also don’t watch TV aside from the news. When I do watch it, I stream it on the computers. We have a nice entertainment center with stereo and large TV. We both enjoyed it. She liked TV more than I did but over the last year she would watch maybe half of a TV show and then want to go up to bed. She wouldn’t really remember anything she saw. I don’t like to sit there by myself so I have just stopped going down there.

I know this is a process and I don’t want to continue to sound like “Poor Me”, but the process is still very mysterious. I want to know what’s next and when will this end. When I go to the monthly support group I hear much of the same story. This process is very unclear. The Kubler Ross stages of grief are helpful, but there is an end to it. At least there used to be. Now the stages keep revolving until you get to acceptance, but then you can start all over again. The difference here is that she is still alive and sometimes I see her shining thru before she falls back again. I wonder if she dies if that will at least start an end to this. Then I begin thinking what if I die first? Would she even know if I was gone? Will my sons be able to manage this? Would anyone come to visit her regularly?

These are the thoughts that go round and round in my head. I think I am avoiding making some very practical decisions about my own life. Do I want to keep living in this large townhouse by myself? If not where would I go? Right now I am going to pack up some of her books and donate them to the Library here in town. I am also going to drop off some things at Good Will. At least this is a start.