Friends on the winds of cyberspace

Why care? Why share? Likely there are as many answers as there are caregivers. Teach us to care is ever evolving.

             

One person somewhere shares a care experience and someone else reads. That experience is used, modified, or inspires someone else in the blogosphere. Caring evolves.

Four summers ago while Patti tooled around the yard in her scooter I was inspired by an entry from A Day In My Life about caregiving in Oklahoma and of all things an irrigation tip from the prairie.

The willow planted that day was small enough to fit in a car for its ride from nursery to home. Today, well …

Now branching over 20’ (6.1 m) wide and 30’ (9.14 m) tall it did not cure Multiple Sclerosis nor dramatically improve caregiving. It does remind me daily that no matter how lonely any one day may be that I am not alone.

Choosing a willow originally was just a spontaneous feel good kind of choice. With time it’s grown in symbolism.

Long before Big Pharma was even Big Pharma, Bayer AG synthetically produced the willow’s salicylic acid and patented it as “Aspirin”? Long, long before that native Americans used it as a staple of their healing arts. Across the then flat world, Hippocrates wrote of its medicinal properties. No Internet nor had anyone traveled between Old and New Worlds. ‘Mother’ Willow somehow healed across people, places, and time.

As the wind blows through the willow branches, I am reminded that another caregiver lives with the challenges of the care facility era in Oklahoma and another in Australia.  A caregiver deals with homecare in Massachusetts and another in Amsterdam. Their stories and more are lived in reality and shared in blogs listed on the sidebar. Friends on the winds of cyberspace and like the resolve of the willow they may bend but never break.

Caregivingly Yours, Patrick Leer 

web site: http://caregivinglyyours.com/

videos: http://www.youtube.com/daddyleer 

musings: patrick ponders