“To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream.”—William Shakespeare
When we were young, we sank to the depths in our sleep and could hardly be awakened from it.
At my age, we are awakened by anything and everything. We get leg cramps, foot cramps, toe cramps. We wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning and wander around the house like ghosts, nibbling crackers or drinking sleepy-time tea in hopes of a cure.
We sleep so lightly that every little noise wakes us up. We try sound machines, ear plugs, or even move to another apartment in order to get away from an upstairs neighbor who walks above us on wooden floors in high heels at one a.m.
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How many older couples still sleep in the same bedroom, no less the same bed? When you find one, ask them how well they sleep.
Adrian and I negotiated our sleeping arrangements for years. We bought so many beds—king, queen, double, twin—it was embarrassing to have the delivery-men remove an almost-new bed to exchange it for a brand-new one of a different size.
Adrian didn’t care about sleep, since he’d never gotten much anyway. He was used to cat-napping during the day. What mattered to him was our physical closeness at night.
I, on the other hand, cared very much about my sacred eight hours, and put together what I thought was a persuasive logical argument that sex, intimacy and sleep are totally unrelated to each other.
As we got older and sleep got harder to achieve, we tried two beds in one room placed right next to each other. I thought that was a perfect solution.
Adrian tolerated it.
Then, after we slept in a king-sized bed in some hotel, I decided that that was the solution: in a king-sized bed there would be so much room it would be like having two beds next to each other. We could still have separate blankets: I wrapped mine around me like a cocoon and Adrian did the opposite. I was always cold and he was always hot.
The king-sized bed was a decent compromise for a few years. Of course, there was only a single mattress, so I could still feel him moving around restlessly, getting up and down. But it made him happy to have us sleeping in the same bed again.
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In the last years of Adrian’s life, he slept less and less. In desperation, I prepared the guest bedroom so I could find some respite there on the nights he woke me up or wouldn’t let me get to sleep in the first place.
But as his dementia progressed, Adrian became disoriented when he got up at night. He needed help finding the bathroom and managing his clothes.
There was no longer any chance of my getting a good night’s sleep.
In the end, when Adrian stopped sleeping altogether at night and we had 24-hour care for him at home, we bought a new bed for the guest-room for him. I had our old bedroom sound-proofed for me and a lock put on the door. I bought a new deluxe sound machine and turned it up high.
I still needed a sleeping pill most nights. And I still woke up when I heard him walking up and down the hall with his aide.
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After Adrian died, I thought I’d be able to sleep again, but once you lose the ability, it doesn’t seem to come back.
Now I keep the cell phone right by my bed because for the first time in my life, I’m afraid at night.
I still use the sound machine, even though I don’t really need it any more. There isn’t anyone there to make noise.
The hush of gentle rain or lapping waves from the sound machine are now comforting in a different way.
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We sleepless ones wander our houses at midnight, at 2, 3 or 4 a.m. We read a book, watch Netflix, play solitaire. Some of us are happy to get 4 hours sleep one night and 6 the next. We read books like I Can Make You Sleep, try hypnotism, herbal teas, and multiple sleep aides. We nap in the afternoons if we can.
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So don’t be offended if we yawn in your face. We just didn’t get a good night’s sleep.