I’m intrigued how to manage my childrens impact of my wife’s illness. Case in point tonight.
I was upstairs making beds when my ten year old son came to tell me his mother was being sick in the downstairs toilet. She had had half a bowl of food after being out for two hours and her body had gone ‘nope, fuck that’. My 16 year old daughter was sat in the lounge, stressed as she is mid GCSEs, and they both were having to deal with this. And this is on top of 6 years of rinse and repeat treatment and sickness, interspersed with the odd treat. How do you help them keep the mental strength to deal with this?
I struggle at 47, and even though I understand the full horror of her diagnosis, and the kids don’t know how serious it is, they are not stupid. They know. They have seen her in a coma. They have seen her be sick. They have seen her lose weight. They have seen her sleep every evening from 7pm. They have seen her struggle to walk to the end of the road. How do they fucking cope with the daily horror of a terminally I’ll mother.
No child should have to see that. No child should have to live for an extended period of time with that stress.
I try tibshield them, but I can only do so much. At times I wonder if this is like a plaster removal. Is it better to get this over with, or do we hope that slowly means we buy time? Cause right now, buying time just makes her worse and there is no sign of the cavalry coming over the horizon