Carolyn in Durant

Carolyn’s dementia is turning out to be a Hitchcock horror movie. Every since we started on this trip she has been sliding into the abyss. She has gotten louder and more insistent that I hurt her, or raped her and she hates me and will never love me or let me touch her again. Maybe Jerry Hirsch of Third Eye photography knew what was going to happen soon. He offered to do a photo shoot of us in romantic poses showing the love we had. He said it was all about memories, and to distribute them any way I wished, as memories is all we will have in awhile. 

In the last week she has told me loudly and incessantly how much she hates me, and how she will never forgive me, ever. I was mystified as to what I had done to deserve such hatred. My protestations of innocence just made Carolyn more angry and much louder, insisting I was lying.

During one of her diatribes at me this morning, she said, “You ruined my puberty and you hurt me really bad and I will never forgive you for what you did to me when I was a little girl.” The lights went on in my head, because I didn’t meet her until several years after she had gotten married, and had a daughter. I did not know her or her family during her puberty.

Somebody hurt her badly during her puberty—raped her—and I have become that person in her mind as her memories have faded into the past. I seem to be reaping what another person sowed. I could expound on the unfairness of it all, but that doesn’t matter now. My hope is to get her medical help and counseling until the memories of this trauma fade away also, hopefully.

Her exposure to the town of her childhood may have triggered the explosion she had. She just keeps telling me how much she hates me, and how much she doesn’t want to see me again, and I’ll never touch her “that way” again.

I have shed more bitter tears in the last week than in my whole life prior to this. That is the only thing keeps me sane, I think. The next few days will be pivotal in determining where she ends up, and where I am going to live. I still want to be near her, and visit her even if I have to take more abuse. I know she doesn’t really understand that it wasn’t me who hurt her, and hope that someday soon she will remember that I am the one who loved her faithfully for 46 years.