Worries about the future, second guesses of the past, and anxieties of the moment can and do come together like some perfect mind storm. On such rare, caregiving days the weight of all around me simply crashes.
Caregivers rarely have the safety net of anyone caring for them. If and when I do find a hand reaching out to me it may as well be an alien encounter. What is this? What do I do with it? Hesitation is not about ‘not wanting’ help but trying to ‘remember’ trust.
Digging one self out of the rubble of a crashed day is too much time lost inside my own head in the muck of a depressing mind swamp. What I wouldn’t give for a rejuvenating meal of sunny side up Phoenix eggs!
When others who cannot care for themselves depend on you, you must get it together and somehow you do. Emotional debris and unfinished thinking gets pushed into that ‘closet’. Leaning your weight against it you manage to shut it again.
Standing outside on trash collection eve, I admire the plies of results from the industrious Spring cleaning of neighbors with more ‘normal’ lives. … What I need is a twilight zone where there is Spring cleaning for a closet shoved full of two decades of caregiving anxieties.
Caregivingly Yours, Patrick Leer
P.S. Cartoon image copied from art and imagination of Berkeley Breathed without permission. Yes, another anxiety but it fit so perfectly.
(((((((((((((((((HUGSTOYOU))))))))))))))))))))You have so much on your plate.I wish I can do somehting for you.I you love your wife and will always be there for Her.But you need some time for you to.Have a nice evneing.
ReplyDeletei love opus:) have a good week:)
ReplyDeleteDeb
.............just know that there are so many of us out here that understands exactly what you mean. But everything comes back and it might be under the bed or behind the couch...so is cleaning the closet worth the effort?
ReplyDeletePeople volunteer to help and I find there really is no way they can help clean this closet........it is too full and to locked in memories.
How timely and accurate your post was today. I wish wish wish their was something I could do to empty your closet if even a little for you. Take care.
ReplyDeleteJulie
awww, Patrick... the image you paint here is painful to read, because in the end, after all is said and done, unless we actually have lived as you have, caring 24/7 for one's spouse for over 25 years, we really have no idea, do we? Somehow, I also imagine you stepping away from that closet door and letting it go for another time, and then some more time. I wonder sometimes if I was ill as your wife, would my husband... could my husband .... care for me with the endurance, skill, hope, and dedication that you give to yours? I also wonder, would I be able to do the same for him? Do I have what it takes to give that kind of care? Could I handle it physically, emotionally? I won't know, I can only hope. I trust that I would. I trust that he would. Hoping tomorrow is less anxiety filled, and that closet doesn't seem so full. Bea
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