CARE ENOUGH TO NOT TURN YOUR BACK ON OTHERS

When I had to care enough to do things caregivers do, I used to joke, “It’s easier if you don’t care.”

It was funny back then because I did things caregivers didn’t do and it earned me the title of ‘Heroic Caregiver.’

That was a name given with certain trepidations because heroic caregivers are one step away from a spectacular burnout.

Or so I’ve heard.

I didn’t burnout, but I felt warm a few times.

My patient in the home caregiver business was my father in law.

He was the step-dad who said I could not sleep with my future wife under his roof because it would make her a whore, her mother a madam, him a pimp, and their dwelling a whorehouse.

The words felt like a blast from the past, and not the 1970’s. More like the 1870’s, or 1770’s.

After I married his stepdaughter and we had a baby together, my new father in law came up with, “I don’t like the way you treat your mother in law, your wife, and how you raise your offspring.”

How could I disagree with someone who knew the score, a veteran of multiple marriages and families. He’d probably heard the same thing a few times from a variety of fathers in law.

Now he was one and didn’t let any opportunity pass to take a shot.

I can say it never bothered me, except I’m writing about it thirty years later. Yep, didn’t bother me one iota.

Offspring?

On The Carousel Of Care

Needless to say, he was an ornery old bird who painfully put in his time with his wife’s side of the family, namely me.

His joys included driving a T-top TransAm around LA when he wasn’t cruising on his huge Honda Gold Wing with a naked lady painted on the tank.

From my point of view, he had life wired down and his new wife was along for the ride. Or the other way around. My mother in law was a force of nature.

The old boy enjoyed the perks of a Southern California lifestyle, living in a hill house with a pool and a great view.

Then he got Parkinson’s Disease and things changed fast. He needed help. More importantly, my mother in law needed help.

Keep this in mind if you have a loved one whose health takes a nosedive. They aren’t the only ones suffering.

After some fast figuring and sudden arrangements, we all moved in together in my Tigard town, with father in law in assisted living.

Week after week brought one problem, then another, and it didn’t stop. My mother in law did everything in her power to make life livable for her man. The effort took a toll, along with a question of who would live longest.

An instance of mild assisted neglect landed the old man in the hospital for what looked like the final showdown. For both my in-laws. She wouldn’t leave his side and he was turning blue a little at a time.

I pressured the doc to give me an opinion on life expectancy. After enough squeezing he said maybe two days for my father in law. I said my mother in law wasn’t looking so good, either.

A Home Caregiver Is Born

Two days? I could handle two days of home care.

On the second day, anticipating his departure, I gave him a life talk to remind him of who he once was. I based it on his service as a Marine in WWII. My experience with Army drill sergeants came in handy.

I spoke to him like he was a trainee, which wasn’t that far off.

The reward for my inspired speech was that he lived five more years before dying peacefully in his sleep. It was a hard five years, but not without personal growth and introspection. I found I was a different man than I thought I was as I rounded into Heroic Caregiver shape.

A few years later I received a cancer diagnosis and the whole thing started over. I would be my own caregiver. While I focused on keeping an even keel, I lost track of other people, like my wife.

She was the other person suffering in the picture, watching her husband take a dive the way her step-dad did.

All I could see was the path in front of me leading from diagnosis to treatment to recovery, and the heck with everything else.

I kept a low profile. Did I need someone to drive me to appointments? No. Someone to cook for me? No. Someone to feel sorry for me? No. But someone wanted to do it all.

Looking back on the beatdown of chemo and radiation, doubts and concerns, life and death, I see how it was for her.

2

Last night we spent the evening with a man undergoing the same stuff to kill the cancer that set up shop. I wanted him to know how important the people in his life were, even if it’s not obvious.

One question I had was whether he noticed people in treatment waiting rooms that had given up hope. He said yes. I said, “You can see it in them, can’t you.”

He said, “Yes.”

“Good, then believe this when I say it. I hear hope in you, I see the life light shining. You can make a difference to everyone around you when they see you and hear you. Don’t be afraid to join the conversations. You’ll bring more to it than you think. You can make a difference and not even know it. Now you know.”

Now you know, too.

Care enough to share.