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My wife's Dad died last week and our emotions are up and down. How long is the average recovery time for caregivers. My wife lost her mom a year ago and for the past 7 months we were her Dad's caregivers under Hospice Care?

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Its a hard question to answer and I can only share my opinion and experience. We lost my father three weeks ago, we had beautiful slide show with photos of his life PRE ALZHEIMERS. We watch it every day, sometimes ten times a day, my moth, kids and I. Some days we cry, some days we reminiss. All in all it takes us back to the man he was pre illness. As most carers do we grived every day for 8 years and eventually watched our father take his last breath. We watch that video so that we can always remember who he was and not who alzheimers made him.
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My heart goes out to you, I am sure that you have had a windful of emotions.
I don't know if there really is a average time because everyone is so different when dealing with these things. You have give yourselfs time to heal, don't rush it my mom has been gone now for 13 years and sometimes when I smell the perfume that she use to wear it makes me want to cry because I still miss her.
Let yourselfs relax and move on slowly take one day at a time.
My thoughts are with you, I hope this helps
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Sorry for you and your wifes loss. Everyone grieves differently. The important thing is that you allow both of you to grieve however you need to and for however long. It's normal to having crying spells. When my mother died years ago I would burst into tears while I would be cleaning house and then go for weeks and it would happen again. When my best friend out in California lost her husband of 50 yrs she grieved so hard for so long that she became severely depressed and needed medical attention. Whenever I would talk with her on the phone she would always cry and talk about how she didn't even want to live anymore. I felt so helpless being all the way across the States from her, all I could do was listen and tell her it was okay to cry and let her go through it. It took her over 2 1/2 years before she started to get better but she was married over 50 yrs and then found herself alone in a big house with kids visiting on weekends if she was lucky. The good thing about your situation is you and your wife have each other and you don't have to go it alone. It doesn't make it any less painful though. Being a caregiver is especially hard for the one doing it when the person they cared for passes. I went through it 3 times already and to me it seemed like it took me longer to get better than it did for my siblings who weren't there to the last like me. We all still miss our parents that have gone on and we have special memories but the grieving usually took us about a year on average. I hope my experience can be of help to you.
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Thank You!
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When is it a good time to show my father videos taken of my mom who just passed last month? They were married 59 years and he is taking it pretty hard despite the presence of my some of my siblings and other family members. He sleeps most of the day and nights or is in his room and says he wants to rest. I'm not sure if the videos of my mom will only make him miss her more.
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