I still feel lonely at times, especially in the evenings, living my life without Adrian. But the loneliness didn’t begin with his death.
The most isolating loneliness was what Adrian and I both experienced while still living together, as his Alzheimer’s disease advanced.
Adrian would come right out and say it: “I’m lonely.”
Of course he was. He didn’t know how to connect with people the way he used to. He couldn’t follow the topic in group conversations. And as he lost his ability to respond, people stopped including him.
I did it, too.
It was impossible not to think of him as a different person from the man I could talk to about anything—the man who was interested in everything I had to say.
Adrian was isolated by his incapacity. He no longer went on long rides with the Finger Lakes Biking Club, to spin class at the gym, to volunteer at the Science Center or Museum of the Earth.
He had to give up his driver’s license and depend on others to get him anywhere. His verbal skills declined greatly.
We still had supper together every night, but they were mostly silent. I’d try to think of things to tell him about, but it was hard to do a monolog every night.
“It’s so quiet,” he would say.
I was going to write, “he would complain,” but I realized as I wrote it that Adrian often made a simple comment on reality that was just that—acknowledging what he perceived. I’m the one who heard it as a complaint, because I felt guilty for screening him out, not trying harder to connect.
Of course we were both lonely in our togetherness.
Adrian was shut off from the world around him.
I’d lost my best friend, who’d been replaced by this sick shell of a person I didn’t know and didn’t know how to care for.
Years ago when my father had dementia and moved to an assisted living facility near us, Adrian helped me to be a better caregiver. He listened to my complaints. He soothed my fears. And he took over the job on the days when I was too exhausted to do it.
Adversity had always brought us closer—we fought the battles together.
But that last one separated us. We went our lonely ways into the dark night.
It is such a relief, now, to feel his spiritual presence—the old Adrian with all his faculties intact.
That’s who he is to me now.
I have that part of him back again.
It makes this loneliness bearable.