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Care Partner of the Month March / April - Page 2

Mark Ryan
Yonkers, NY

The night he died was unbelievable and words can't even describe it. Then the aftermath was hard because it gets worse as time goes by. After all the running around, funeral arrangements and this and that to settle everything, it finally sank in that this person's not coming back. And I was by myself. There are no words that anybody could say for me to feel better because in an instance like that, there ARE no words. The only thing that people could say to me was, "I'm sorry", because that's about all people can say when something like that happens. I prayed that instead of him, let it be ME. I told God that I was the one with the muscular dystrophy and I couldn't understand it. To this day I feel it's unfair in a way because Frank was so well and he was such a lively, active, artistic, creative person. It was like God wasted this human being who had so much to give and his life was cut so short at 62. It was like turning a light switch off. That's how he really died.

His sister was far away, but she did come. Then his niece helped me and he had an old friend who helped me, so I did have some people helping me. But in the beginning, when he first died, everything was on me. Suddenly, everything was thrown at me. When you have a relationship, you split things - he did this, I did that. Then all of a sudden I had to remember everything that had to be done. It was like I was shell-shocked. But somehow, through all that mess, I functioned. It's amazing that you can go through all that mess and still know to function. Even though you're upset, you do know how to function.

It will be four years in August. Now everything has gotten back to normal, but I still look at it as having my left arm missing. You always miss that, but you ask yourself what would he or she want me to do? Frank would say to me, "LIVE!" It took four years, but I'm finally coming out of my grief. You can't let anybody tell you that you should get over your grief in a year or two years. It takes its time and each person grieves differently. With some people it takes months, but in my case it did take a good four years. Now this is what life is and it's back to normal finally, and that's how it is.