I'm home today. These days that is a rare occurrence.
My absence in this space has not been intentional. I desperately want to be able to write and lord knows there is no shortage of topics. There just simply has been no time.
But today I want to take this opportunity to speak to what I am learning daily. Caregiving.
It's one thing to see a situation, observe the challenges a friend is facing, hear about a heartbreaking change in someone's life, read about the struggles involved in juggling multiple needs. It's wholly another to be immersed within, learning on the job, as it were.
That has been my life of late. And to every caregiver, every child now shepherding parents, every friend or relative supporting someone they love, every person whose brief respites are private trips to the bathroom or falling into bed each night exhausted - I want to say, I see you. Clearly. And you're heroes. Every one of you.
The universe and its workings never fail to impress me, make me stop short. In a world where I am uncertain as to what I believe may be "out there" or "come next" I can say this - once again, circumstances that made no sense to me 18 months ago, now seem to be perfectly clear. Why we ended up in Phoenix, crash landed more like - now feels like the universe moving the chess pieces of our lives into position for what was coming.
My sister is fighting to get to the other side of breast cancer and the horrific chemical follow up that must be endured. My parents are moving into a retirement facility to be in a place with a safety net as my father's Parkinson's progresses. Part of that is preparing their home for sale, packing, organizing, emotionally dealing with the very real struggles of letting go of the life they have known, in the home where they have lived for nearly 3 decades.
That they and she live in Phoenix, where I now call home, is too big a coincidence for me to ignore.
Being able to be here for them? I am eternally grateful. I cannot imagine being states away as they face these hurdles and traumas. And it is an honor to be their support system. But...
But now I feel what I had previously only seen from afar. As friends have faced down their own cancer battles; as they have begun shouldering the changing lives of elderly parents - I have sympathized, I have said all the right words, I have sent love, light, prayers, encouragement. What I could not fully grasp, however, is the constant state of drowning in which they have existed.
I feel it constantly. Treading emotional water 24 hours a day, back burnering your personal life, goals, endeavors, marriage to be available for whatever and whoever needs you. Please know I am not complaining. This is not really even venting, at least from where my heart sits on this keyboard. This is truly meant as an expression of awe, a love letter of appreciation to every person I have watched doing these things before me.
I now know how you spread your life so thin, trying to do and be for those you love. I feel the weight that your loved ones carried as they supported you through your cancer and health ordeals. I taste the tears you have tasted for years before me. I know how empty your tank has been yet you keep going. And I know what it is like to stare into the dark each night, completely exhausted yet unable to find escape in sleep because there is too much at stake, too many details to mind, too much heartache to bear.
My best friend in this world, my safe space since I was born, my sister is valiantly braving each day as her body still heals from surgery only to be dragged through the depths of chemo. I would take her pain, her trauma, her worst days if I could. That pain would be preferable to watching her struggle from moment to moment, face the inevitable side effects of the poison being injected into her to hopefully find and kill any remaining cancer cells that may dare try to hide and reemerge at a later date. I feel helpless, and I don't do helpless well. I cannot make this stop for her. I cannot get between her and what is happening, what must happen for her to come out the other side.
And it breaks me.
It has been over three years since my parents told us about my father's Parkinson's diagnosis. As with all medical things that touch our lives, I, too, ripped a hole in the web learning about it, becoming an expert, and railing at the realities of no cure, scant effective treatments, and a prognosis where only deterioration lies ahead. I am watching the man who has always been larger than life, the life of the party, the man quick with a joke, a punchline - diminish. That is the best way I can describe it. Weight loss, cognitive slippage, frailty, tremors.
And it breaks me.
My Mom has been a champion, a fixer, a giver her entire life. But shouldering my father's progression throughout COVID is taking its toll on her as well. The isolation, the fears, the diligence to his needs, his medication schedules, his ever changing symptoms, and watching her see the man of her life slowly fading away is heartbreaking.
Their decision to finally make the move into a retirement facility was a time gamble they almost lost. In truth this should have been at least a year ago, but we cannot make their decisions for them. Yet.
That yet hangs over me daily. It haunts me at night. I am with them almost daily now - painting their home, carpet cleaning, clearing out, packing, balancing the emotional component of having to let go of "things" with the reality that they cannot take all their "things" to the new place. My vow to myself, to them, has been to not strip them of their agency, their autonomy in this process. Decisions are theirs, I am simply there to love them along, to augment them, to talk them through, to listen, take notes, advise. Yes, there is also a huge piece of the pie labeled cajole-nudge-reason-manipulate, but I now understand how that last one is a necessary evil in all this. Having raised kids, I now see what I have watched from afar with friends, I have entered the beginnings of parenting my parents.
And it breaks me.
I don't want to have to do any of this. I don't want to be the force behind them having to choose between the three piles for everything they own, all the physical memories they have amassed:
1. New place 2. Goodwill / Garbage 3. Storage
But it must be done. So I put on my smile each morning, and it is with love that I lead and patience that I practice more now than at any moment in my life. This is hard for them. And to not acknowledge that, not make allowances for that would be cruel.
So I breathe. I close my eyes and re-center myself multiple times daily. And I whisper to myself the words my mother raised me with - "There is nothing to it, but to do it."
To every friend who has passed this way before me; who is in this fight right now; who is one wave over in this ocean, treading water full speed ahead - I see you clearly, fully, finally. I know your exhaustion. I feel your fears. I know you watch your parents now and think about your own life - will this be you, how will you manage, how will your spouse handle watching you slowly fade away before their eyes, or you watching them?
I have always written that in life, there is knowing and then there is KNOWING. The first is based in suppositions, context clues, guesses, what you think you know about someone or a situation. But the latter is based in living the reality, jumping off the cliff, being shoved through the moment between the two, finding out what exists on the other side.
What I now know is there is privilege in the former, heartbreak in the latter. Privilege because a situation, a disease has not literally touched your life, threatened to take away someone you hold dear. Heartbreak because when it does touch your life, threaten those you love, you immediately feel the rubber of your life hit the road, as you careen at breakneck speeds to do anything, all things you can to try to make it even a little bit better. You feel the emotional tsunami bear down upon you, taking you under, trying to drown you in waves of fear, sadness, rage, futility, and despair.
I see you. I know you. I am you. I love you. And I am just one wave over treading water with you.
Linda
Recent Comments