support

Today I went to an AD support group meeting.

I try to go every month, second Wednesday at 2.

There was about a dozen there today, including a college girl who was looking after her grandmother, and a mother, father and daughter. Father has AD, daughter and wife are deeply devoted to him.

We laugh a lot at those meetings, but it is little bit uneasy, those laughs. We listen a lot and some take more time than others, some have real problems that the rest of us have not come to yet.

Don is one of the coordinators. He had been married almost 60 some years, but his wife died last month. He was there, acting like he always does, but I could see that he was deeply grieving.

It is hard to be happy when every patient represented by the group is loosing a bit each month. Some a little, some quite a bit.

It is also hard to be really upbeat at times like that, but being downbeat has no advantage at all.

So we smile and act like we have everything under control.