I have been having very intense dreams lately....mostly involving my late husband Gary. He was diagnosed with Frontotemporal Degeneration in 2014 and I suffered with him until his death in January 2018. I loved him dearly for 32 years and we had many great adventures together....many of which are chronicled in this blog.
The last few years of his life were mixtures of laughter, misadventures, caregiving and at the end, a near rendition of what I imagine hell to be like. I was always concerned that once I switched from loving wife to the status of "caregiver" that I would never be able to separate the realness of the disease and its horrific effects from the beautiful memories. There are times when I sit and try to recall special moments, vacations, etc and I always seem to super-impose the memory by inserting the "dementia Gary" into the memory. It ruins everything.
But I have hope that someday the memories will be sorted into accurate timeframes with accurate faces, wellness and memories. There is hope and I know the accurate memories are still there due to the dreams that have perplexed me these past few nights.
For example: last night I dreamed that Gary and I were riding in our Toyota Prius but we were sitting in the back seat and attempting to drive it from the back seat. We were in a neighborhood somewhere that we have driven before and we were laughing at how silly the situation was. He was normal again. Our Beagle dog Diva Gerl (now deceased) was running next to the car and sniffing the flowered trail that I saw outside the window. We would have never let her run free, so in my mind this was odd. Gary was going on and on and talking about the houses that we were passing...much like he used to when discovering a new place or sharing one of his entrepreneurial ideas. I found myself listening to him like I never had before. He was intelligent again. It made my happy.
Then, the dreamed continued and we pulled up to our old house in Elk Grove, California. We hopped out and the scene turned dark. Everything was pitch black as we opened the front door. When I walked in the house I found it odd that the night light by the front door was not working. Gary turned on the flashlight to his phone and headed for the breaker box. Again, he was normal with no signs of the dementia stare that plagued him in the end.
In the dream, the lights came on but he did not re-enter the house. I looked for him and found him outside the house at the breaker box. It was open and he had flipped the breaker to bring on the lights. I looked at his face and he was again the "dementia Gary" with no response. Somehow, it was symbolic of him trading his intelligence for the light.
Ironically, when I awoke this morning and entered by bathroom, the night light was dark and the electrical plugs did not work. Switching the breaker did no good and now I await an electrician.
I don't really know what any of this meant and I can only assume it is a coincidence.
If you have a loved one with FTD....take videos, make recordings and take lots of photos.....I would hate for you not to have the good memories for times when things are not going well. It is important to preserve the healthy memories.
