What happens to marriages when one person disappears mentally?
Being in a relationship is a commitment and when one partner is not there, either physically by death or mentally by death, the relationship is ended. That does not mean that you abandon the affected partner, but if the surviving partner is not allowed to continue living, both will die.
My mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s early in the 1990’s. My dad who was mid 70’s was physically and mentally in very good condition. He took care of my mother at home for several years. When he tried to travel with her by car, he discovered that he couldn’t enter ladies rooms to assist her and she couldn’t do it alone. Then he tried flying but one time my mom wandered off when Dad went to the men’s room. He was panicked and after consulting with the family( me and my sister and 3 brothers) came to the conclusion that my mother needed custodial care. We all agreed because we became aware that we were going to lose both parents if something didn’t change. My Mom was placed in a nursing facility specifically for Alzheimer’s patients and my dad visited her daily. He used to hold her hand, paint her fingernails, curl her hair, take her for ice cream and walk around the grounds with her. My mother at that time did not recognize any of her children or grandchildren. Although my dad would never acknowledge it, I don’t believe she recognized him either. She was completely incoherent.
Dad developed a new relationship during that time. He became friends with a woman who was distraught over her own relationship. Her husband had left her for a younger woman. She later told me that the only reason they started seeing each other was because they were both so miserable no one else could tolerate them.
He came alive again. He started to spend more time with the other woman and asked me what I thought. He felt guilty because he was still married and didn’t know how we would react. I told him that he should go for it because he was alive and our mother was gone. Her body still existed but her mind was completely gone.
It was a really positive move for my father. He was 78 when they met. They started living together about 6 months later. My mom was completely mentally gone though physically still alive in the nursing home. My dad continued to visit my mom daily even though she didn’t know him. My mother died a year later of the expected complications when she wouldn’t eat or get out of bed. We refused to have a feeding tube put in my mother to keep her alive because her quality of life was miserable.
6 months after my mother died, my dad married the woman he had been living with for a year. She adored him and they were very happy together for another 8 years. At age 85, my dad died very suddenly of a heart attack while hanging wallpaper in their new home. My siblings and I were very grateful for the happiness that our young stepmother( she was my age) provided for my dad. It kept him happy, alive, and cared for by someone who loved him at a time when he could have been a very sad, depressed, and potentially needy burden to his children. Love is a wonderful healing power for grief.
Romance re-entry is a course available for those out of practice. Don’t judge anyone about how they grieve or recover from their loss of a loved one. Everyone is entitled to live their own life. When a partner is gone mentally because of Alzheimers, brain damage or a persistant vegetative state for any reason, the one who is still living deserves to have a life. No one has the right to judge anyone else’s decisions about grief and loss.