Caregivers / After

The caregiving is over. You are not okay yet. That is normal.

The literature on what happens to caregivers after is sparse, and most of it is about you.

The grief you expected

When your loved one dies, you grieve them.

The loss of the person who was your parent, your spouse, your sibling. The loss of who they were before the disease. The loss of who they became while you cared for them.

Grief in dementia caregiving is different from other grief because.

The person was already partly gone. You grieved them in pieces, for years.
Their death may bring relief alongside loss, and the relief is not a betrayal.
You may feel that you lost them twice: once to the disease, once to death.

The grief you did not expect

A grief about who you became, and who you are now that the role has ended.

"If I am not their caregiver, who am I?" The identity loss.
The empty calendar. The loop is gone. The hours are quiet.
The friendships you let lapse. The career you let drift.
The body that ran on adrenaline and is now crashing.

This grief is real and predictable. Forty years of caregiver research describes it.

Your health

The mortality risk for caregivers does not end with caregiving.

Studies show elevated mortality and morbidity for 2 to 4 years post-caregiving. Take this seriously.

What to do.

Get a full physical. Tell your doctor what you have just been through.
Sleep aggressively. Make up for what you lost. This is medical work, not laziness.
Re-establish basic self-care: meals, exercise, sun, contact with people.
Treat depression and anxiety actively. The 81 percent of depressed caregivers who go untreated is not a statistic to join.