*In the Corners of my Mind

by Richard M. Zuckerberg, Ph.D. My mind is full of memories these days.  As I look back, I can still remember quite vividly the parties we had at "the house" where we lived our wonderful adult life.  For 35 years, it was the same old house with an ever-increasing group of family and friends. The parties were full of people with their laughter and stories to help celebrate traditional events of one kind or another.  One essential element of these events would be the singing of songs.  At times, some of us would gather to sing in unison, struggling to achieve harmonies with familiar and "creative" chords, and at other times I would take the floor to entertain with my versions of golden oldies or pop standards. Inevitably, my mother-in-law would ask if I could sing her favorite song - "Memories". I knew she wanted me to sing "The Way We Were", the song made famous by Barbra Streisand, but probably a Gallup Poll would have most of us naming the song "Memories".   Of course, I honored her request and never corrected her mistitling of the song.  As I sang, she would sit on her chair, seemingly looking somewhere back in her past, and her eyes would water.  The whole thing was of course a little corny, even for me, although I would be the first to acknowledge that I was at times a little out of step with my generation in this regard, because I was a little corny myself.  After all, I was a war baby, not a baby boomer, firmly straddling the '40s and '50s in my early formative years; thus, Sinatra and the sound of the big bands was part of the soundtrack of my life.    In the peak years of our parties, I must have been in my late 30s and early 40s;  my in-laws correspondingly were in their 50s and 60s.  Now, as I approach my 65th birthday, and my in-laws are no longer here, it's easier for me to understand their holding onto the fond memories of the past with some tenacity and fondness.  In the early part of my relationship with my wife, they would sit us down at dinner begin, in overlapping unison, to tell the same stories of their early dating, when taking the trolley down and back up Flatbush Ave. in Brooklyn was considered a big outing on Saturday night.  All they could afford was the fare of the trolley ride and a basket of cherries, but it was wonderful because they were young and in love.   It was not so easy to see them this way in the here and now of their life together, because the subsequent years did not reveal that early affection, even though a sense of togetherness was still there.  I thought to myself then, and still remember now, how I imagined that their listening to these songs sung by this young man who married their daughter, and continued to love her with such caring and devotion, reminded them of those now loosened bonds of their early romance.  I'm writing this now to try and give some expression to my new and developing sense of still powerful and yet loosening bonds to my very ill wife. The sense of this is very complicated for me because I have been a "well spouse" now for more than 15 years.  Having been with my wife for 30 years prior to the beginnings of her disease, the bonds of love and devotion run deep.  We had as glorious a marriage as two people could have had, and this feeling is as unforgettable as are the memories.  I have both great joy in the remembrances, and sorrow to see how they have slowly slipped away.   I'm afraid to say that the years of caregiving have worn me down.  It has been a torturous and challenging process to both care for my wife and continue to live a vital life outside of my caregiving responsibilities.   And only now with time and reflection and some intense work to disentangle myself, have I begun to restore my sense of having a new and more separate life.   I'm not sure if I can trace the route by which I arrived at this place, but I do know that the memories have begun to fade a bit, and to recede more and more into the "corners of my mind", as the words of the song I used to sing now echo in my mind with a new meaning.   Some of this has had to do with the increasing "disappearance" of my wife as she once was.  She is no longer able to participate in life and in love with me the way we once did so easily and fluidly, and this increasing frustration, despair, and acceptance has led me to a different perspective.  In the early years of watching her life slip away, I grabbed on and held tightly to her and our memories. There seemed to be no room inside me for much of any "new" life, as most of my life was consumed with trying to keep things the way we were, or being immersed in memories of the way we were.   This piece is really about both reminiscences of the past, about the way we were, and reveries about the future, about the imaginings of a life beyond the past and present, but that in some ways incorporates both.  It's about the "psychological separation" that I have had to achieve in order to feel renewed in my life, a life separate from our life or a life for me that is not defined by caregiving.  I feel I now have a choice to struggle with this, as does my wife in her own way, even as she is trapped and limited by her disease.  Increasingly, I believe that I still have a life to live, in a more separate way, and with new possibilities of things to come. As increased acceptance and separation have emerged, I feel a kind of readiness and a willingness to make this new life happen, to allow it to happen.  This is what being part of the Well Spouse family has taught me - to always keep myself in mind and to never abandon my sense of separateness and the possibilities that lie ahead for me.  I am for the first time, in a long time, looking forward - knowing that my time here is precious and that I still have a life to be lived.   I will remain, I believe, a devoted and caring husband, taking on the present and future struggles that caring for my wife will present.  But I have begun to emerge from a state of grief, of feeling that if we can't live our life together the way it was, that my life has ended as well or that there are no possibilities of defining myself outside of the role of caregiver.   I can see now, and accept with more clarity and conviction, that that the life we imagined for ourselves is now over.  But, there are new chapters to be written and struggles to redefine myself, which might even include some integration of caring for my wife and being with her in a new way, and finding a new partner with whom to share my life that is full of the living, loving and complete mutual sharing that I so deeply cherished with my wife for so many years, and still yearn for now.  But I will always carry with me the memories which are, however, receding more and more dimly into the "corners of my mind." I can say this now with a mixture of nostalgia, sorrow and joy, and with a renewed purpose that the creation of new life will bring new memories along with it.   [In his career as a psychologist, Dr. Zuckerberg has written articles and presented papers on Spousal Caregiving in many venues, including the American Psychological Association, and has organized workshops at Well SpouseTM Conferences.  He is in private practice in Brooklyn, New York.  His email address is This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .] [first published in Mainstay]