Embrace The Suck

“Family caregivers are faced with the question of when and how to let go.” (315) This is when the caregiver must learn to walk the crooked line between letting go of the care-ee and nurturing her/his own spirit. Not easily done. I feel like I’m standing on the end of a high dive overlooking an olympic sized pool that is my future. I have two choices. One is to take the plunge off without thinking about it to help my father. The other is to slowly and deliberately back down the stairs, don some water wings and step into the shallow end to care for myself. I can’t help but wonder what might happen if the choices were reversed? Could I jump to save myself and proceed with caution to see to my father’s dying needs? I know what I should do, but lack the energy to do it. The irony is that I’ve been so busy looking after others that I’ve abandoned me, and I’m no longer sure where to look to find me. It’s when you’re feeling lost like this that Sheehy says “it’s time to save yourself.” (3...

There are many things I'd like to change about the way I raised my kids. I'd like to take back the time I smacked Wendy for doing something to her brother in the store. My sister bought her a Pink Panther mug that today serves as a reminder that I was quick to judge and punish. I'd like to take back the time I attacked Johnson with a wooden spoon. Lord only knows what he did to drive me to the point of madness. I stopped myself before I really got going, but I'll never forget the look on his face. I'd like to take back the time I told two little kids who were excited about Christmas coming that Santa had had a heart attack and wouldn't be coming that year. God God, was I the devil incarnate or what? And I'd like to take back the many times when I was in a hurry to go somewhere or do something and I rushed the kids into the car, without giving a thought to their needs or desires. Forget tying shoes at a snail's pace. Forget looking for worms on the way ...

Except for a few pages aimed directly at dealing with Alzheimers disease, which does not apply to me, I gulped down Passages like a glass of lemonade on a hot summer’s day. When I got to the last chapters I realized, with a sigh of relief, I am not crazy, just burned out. I’ve been about the business of caregiving for most of my life, so you’d think I would have recognized the symptoms. The fact that I considered, even for a moment, that “burn out” was better than “crazy” is a pretty good sign that I needed the wake-up call Passages provided. Passages also drew a picture of my caregiving style. Without knowing it, I’ve bypassed Super-hero status and moved right on to God. According to Sheehy “Playing God” is a common trait in caregivers. It is no surprise that people with a “strong sense of compassion” (267) are more likely to jump into the caregiving boxing ring. Because we are not God, by the time we get to round 5 or 6 or 7 we’ve almost succeeded in knocking ourselves t...

A certain someone who is 93 years old and driving me to drink used to say to me: "If you're going to do something at all, do it right." To my young ears, right meant perfect. Something I have spent my life trying to achieve and falling far short of the mark. When I was quilting a lot I was never one to have perfectly matched up seams and corners. I read somewhere that the Amish believe only God is perfect so they actually sew a few mistakes into their quilts. Well, that became my "imperfect" excuse. I was quite delighted to read Brene Brown's blog today. She has started a Perfect Protest, of which I am glad to join. Hop on over there to read what it's all about. Maybe you'll feel like jumping on the bandwagon. Wishing for you a life without the burden of perfection, Merry ME P.S. Here's a picture of what happens when a pyrex dish with a little imperfection meets an oven temperature it doesn't like: I guess there could be a metaphor for ...

cPlease consider the following a Public Service Announcement. Because it is long I'm going to chop it up into bite-sized pieces. As you'll be able to tell I really believe that reading this book is something people of my age group should do. Merry ME Most of you already know my story, but here's a little background. It might explain why I'm so drawn to the topic of caregiving. I started having children when I was 19. At the ripe old age of 48, my empty nest felt lonely. I could have taken up a strenuous hobby like running marathons or climbing mountains on each of the world’s continents. Instead, I responded to a request by my father to move back home to help care for my mother who had some after-stroke disabilities. Fifteen years later I’m still at it. It’s a sure bet that mountain climbing would have been the easier choice. Two months after mother’s death, I got a foretaste of what it would be like to care for my father. He had his hip replaced for the third time. W...

Even if I hadn't been sick I might have missed the fact that today is International Peace Day if I hadn't read it in Pam's blog . Shame on me. I think maybe in His/Her Infinite Wisdom God may have planned for the birth of a baby king in a Jerusalem stable to be the equivalent of International Peace Day. Even though He/She is God, could anyone have guessed the potential corrupting power of mass marketing at Christmas time. A time when all minds should be on the dawning of peace and not inflatable snow globes or hot pink aluminum trees? Perhaps the all knowing One wants us to figure out peace on our own. That makes more sense doesn't it? Remember learning to tie your shoes. How, even though it was a little tricky to hold onto that one loop and twirl the other shoe lace around and through, when you did it and pulled the two loops tight and they held. Wow! It felt much better than having mom or dad do it for you. Maybe that will be what peace feels like if we ever achieve ...

"To feel keenly the poetry of a morning's roses, one has to have just escaped from the claws of this vulture which we call sickness. " Henri Frederic Amiel I believe I left you with the opinion after my last post that my trip to the doctor and various labs was uneventful, which in caregiving lingo means no crisis ensued. No crisis with the care-ee, I mean. It never occurred to me that I would take ill so swiftly or severely. For two days I blamed every ache and pain in my body, from my eyelashes to my toenails and each spot in between, on that blasted flu shot. Sweetie stood back smugly and gave me an "I told you so" look. He doesn't believe in flu shots. I got over my hangup of the shot being worse than the disease a long time ago. And it was not a live virus so how could I get sick? I was sure it had to be something else, but what? The plague? MRSA? West Nile Virus? Some virulent new strain of Ican'ttakeitanymore? Seems I'd been brewing an infectio...

No life is so hard that you can't make it easier by the way you take it. Ellen Glasgow I had an 11:30 appointment with my Primary Care doc this morning, am just returning home at 3:29pm. I never expected it to take so long, but am marking the hours of sitting and waiting in the relaxation column! Not a walk on the beach, or a snooze, but time when I didn't have to do anything other than read cooking magazines. I thought I had left my phone on the hall table so in essence I believed I was incommunicado. I borrowed an office phone to check in with Sweetie and tell him my plan, other than that the boys were left to their own devices and so was I. Here's what transpired: 1. I got a flu shot 2. Doc gave me some exercises for my arm/shoulder pain. 3. Doc agreed that I have a stress-filled life. Said the human body isn't made to sustain stress over a long period of time. I guess back in the saber-tooth tiger days, the stress was intense then gone - either you ate or got eate...

I am remiss in not adding this to my last post. I am filled with gratitude to every one of you who reads my blog, sends me emails and post cards, lifts me up, encourages me, makes me smile and understands when I cry. Your love and acceptance give me the "umphf" I need to keep going and give back. I didn't say it before. Thank you. Merry ME

"A good, real, unrestrained, hearty laugh is a sort of glorified internal massage, performed rapidly and automatically. It manipulates and revitalizes corners and unexplored crannies of the system that are unresponsive to most other exercise methods. * Not sure I can write down exactly what I'm feeling but need to try. I'm reading this book, Passages in Caregiving by Gail Sheehy. [More about this later] I know it's kind of crazy to spend my day and part of my night in the act of caregiving, then go to bed and read more about it before I go to sleep. I'm near the end of the book, which you can imagine is near the end of Sheehy's caregiving story. I'm reading about Medicare, Medicaid, Hospice, Palliative Care, Visiting nurses and the Catch 22 that an untold number of caregivers like me are dealing with on a daily basis. I'm feeling both appalled at a system that is so screwed up and somehow grateful that there is a system at all. I think that's a goo...

“Most of my images are grounded in people. I look for the unguarded moment, the essential soul peeking out, experience etched on a person’s face." Steve McCurry* Probably because I've been spending so much time lately with Dad's slide collection, my ears perked up on Saturday when I heard an interview on NPR with a photographer discussing the end of a photographic era - the last roll of Kodachrome film was processed at Dwayne's Photo Service in Parson's, Kansas in July. As I listened to the photographer talk of his life/work in photo journalism and how much he depended on this film, I thought about how even my own limited foray into the world of taking pictures has changed. No more taking roll after roll of pictures and waiting for them to be developed. No more dark rooms or pictures ruined by a thumb over the lens. Professionals and wanna-bes alike, can point and shoot and have a picture at the touch of a button. Photos that might otherwise be sitting in a slide...

"Today, we gather to be reassured that God hears the lamenting and bitter weeping of Mother America because so many of her children are no more. Let us now seek that assurance in prayer for the healing of our grief stricken hearts, for the souls and sacred memory of those who have been lost. Let us also pray for divine wisdom as our leaders consider the necessary actions for national security, wisdom of the grace of God that as we act, we not become the evil we deplore.”* I was in Mrs. Carden's 6th grade classroom when the news that John Kennedy had been shot was announced over the loudspeaker. A collective gasp escaped the mouths of children too young, too naive to understand what had just happened. I tried to hide my tears on the bus ride home. Neighborhood boys made wise cracks and pointed fingers at nerds like me who cried for something they couldn't comprehend. I wept as the boys postured. I watched in horror as Walter Cronkite reported first Martin Luther King's ...

“Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.” CoCo Chanel Even though there are a lot of people in the blog world already talking about the onset of autumn, I'm sitting here sweating. One would think that as the temperatures start to drop, the hot flashes would also begin to diminish. If not in heat at least in frequency. Estrogen, or lack of, is a funny thing. The weatherman said that mornings would begin to be a little cooler but noontime temps would still hit 90+ which is down from 100+. What's weird is that 90 something actually feels less hot which is ridiculous because, as we all know, anything over 90 falls in to the red zone. Still, I think that there are changes in the air. Oh so small, but still there. In Florida there is not a lot of color change like there is when you get even a little further North. And for some reason the oak trees shed in the Spri...