Background: My wife's mother, whom she loves dearly, was diagnosed with elderly dementia about 3 years ago. Like these things go, it starts out slow, but accelerates exponentially. My wife is a nurse, so she has the intellectual understanding of how these things progress, but her brothers and father are engineers, and are simply lost, not understanding the medical aspects of all of this. Well, the past few months, and now weeks, have accelerated further. Talks of Hospice and palliative care have gone on within the past two weeks. Then, a recent physician appointment prompted an abdominal x-ray which showed a severe herniation of her esophagus and her stomach had been pulled upwards through the hole in her diaphragm and now sits in her chest, being compressed by her lungs. So, now surgery was being talked about, because perhaps her loss of appetite was due to her stomach compression,...and why the rapid decline. So, that prompted a pre-surgical cat-scan. I just got a text from my wife a few minutes ago, the cat-scan showed a huge mass (presumably cancer) in her left upper lobe of her lung, with what appears to be metastasis. I don't know if I should even respond to this text. I am thinking I should ignore it and see how my wife is doing before saying a word. In fact, I am thinking I probably should just keep my mouth shut and just agree with whatever she is feeling.
Keep in mind, I don't process death of a loved one,...at least not in the way I think most people do. My father and my brother,...my brother, I cried like a blubbering idiot for his wife and kids. There was no funeral for my father and I tried to talk to my mother a few days after dad's death,...she was an emotional mess on the phone,...and I was my self,...and she hung up on me. Neither situation have I felt loss, so I feel quite emotionally handicapped with all of this and I am quite afraid that I might say something,...or nothing at all,...and my wife and her family are going to get quite offended by my behavior, or lack of it.
I feel like I am tied to the tracks just waiting for this train to hit me.
Keep in mind, I don't process death of a loved one,...at least not in the way I think most people do. My father and my brother,...my brother, I cried like a blubbering idiot for his wife and kids. There was no funeral for my father and I tried to talk to my mother a few days after dad's death,...she was an emotional mess on the phone,...and I was my self,...and she hung up on me. Neither situation have I felt loss, so I feel quite emotionally handicapped with all of this and I am quite afraid that I might say something,...or nothing at all,...and my wife and her family are going to get quite offended by my behavior, or lack of it.
I feel like I am tied to the tracks just waiting for this train to hit me.