The Caregiver

I found it in the kitchen drawer. Cryptic notes on a page from a tiny tablet, dates, times, and amounts of liquid morphine and the other medicines I had given Mom her last few days of life. I'd had to write it down to keep it straight in my mind.  July 24, July 25,  right up to 11 AM on 26th, the last time I gave Mom her meds.  She opened her eyes and her tiny little breaths, short and gasping, ceased.  She quietly passed from this world at 12:06 PM.  I am unwilling to part with this little piece of paper.  It means something but I don't yet know what it signifies.

By placing myself here, at the keyboard, I'm feeling a heavy weight bearing down on me.  I don't want to write, haven't written since February.  I have been telling myself to channel my grief and sadness into my paintings, into the non-verbal discourse of art.  But that's not happening.  I'm sort of stuck, plugged up, corked (I think they call this "denial.")  I'm wondering if I've even begun to grieve.

Sadness and grief are partners but they are not the same.  I am sad, most certainly.  But there are feelings buried inside that I don't even begin to want to explore. Perhaps it's like returning from a trip or retreat or "mountaintop" experience; not wanting to talk about it too much for fear the telling of it is remembered more than the experience itself.  Are these memories too precious to be spoken of or too painful to admit?

Maybe I should begin by telling you that I was my mother's caregiver.  What a dignified title, "caregiver."  I didn't seek it but I  accepted it and I think I eventually learned to do it well.  Finally.  In the last few days of my mother's life.

I had really hoped that when Mom and Dad moved in with us they would be able to enjoy life in Saint Charles.  I dreamed of Mom and me going shopping and enjoying painting together.  I hoped Pop could walk up and down Main Street, smoking his cigars and flirting with the shopkeepers.  But by the time we convinced them to move in with us, Pop was recovering from triple by-pass and gallbladder surgeries and Mom's leukemia and congestive heart were advanced.  She was already dying, had been dying, by inches for a very long time and we just couldn't see it.  That sounds paradoxical because we had thought she was dying, expecting it for years but she had this amazing knack of recovery.  Total rebound that made us question each episode that preceded it.  Now, looking through the lens of the last few months, I see it all much clearer.

It didn't happen the way I'd hoped.  Mom lived here pretty much the same way as she had before coming, mostly in the bedroom and sleeping much of the time. We did a couple of shopping trips, a few lunches out, and maybe one or two times in the studio.  She expressed much regret and a lot of desire but never had the physical or mental energy to get out and do things.  But the one thing that I regret the most is that Mom was disappointed in our relationship.

Mom had anticipated life here as an extended vacation, much like the times that I had spent with her in their home in Alabama when we came to visit.  At the time they moved in with us, Tim and I were still teaching classes two-three nights a week and had a studio and gallery to run.  Even if I had had nothing to do, I still wouldn't have wanted to sit beside her bed all day long, to the exclusion of all else, drinking coffee endlessly and waiting on her needs (this was pretty much how my visits to Alabama went.)  But not only that, we found ourselves butting heads over almost everything, especially the dispensing of drugs.  And as the caregiver, I took that business very seriously.

If it was a matter of giving something other than the doctors had prescribed, I could not be swayed. My mother met her match in me.  Mom, who had spent her entire life governing herself and making up her own mind about which drugs to take and how much and when, now had a daughter telling her what she could and couldn't have.  We argued about this and other things, and Mom lamented that I was not the "Chrissy Jane" she thought I was and that even though she was so thankful to have my care and to be living with me, it was not what she had anticipated.

Now for my moment of self-justification:  even when I did take the time to sit with Momma, she would pick up a magazine or watch tv or most often, take a nap.  I would slip away and return to whatever I had been doing.  I thought that between mealtimes and coffee times and bedtime snuggles we had shared a lot of times but Mom said she thought it would have been better if she had stayed home.  At least, she thought, the boys checked in on her now and then.  No matter Dad was in his chair just outside the bedroom door.  No matter that she had been desperately lonely on the farm before she came.  No matter that we were living together, not visiting a few brief days a year.

She was dying and needed lots of love and reassurance.  Because I was suffering from caregiver fatigue, and because she'd rallied so many times that neither I nor any one else believed she was ever going to really die, and mostly because it happened so gradually that I didn't believe the evidence before my eyes, I withheld the last bit of energy and love that I could have given.  Until she was really and truly dying, and then I gave her my all.        

In Search of Wings

Mom and Dad say I was a naturally pleasant and cheerful child, even as a baby. They said I would greet them in the morning, while standing in my crib, with: "Hi! Hello! Good morning, Mommy!" I'm sure I was indulged and cosseted, being the third child and the first girl. But, even so, or despite that, I was sweet and good.

I also had a devilish streak, too. One time my friend, Suzy Kohl, and I were taking a nap at my house. I guess that makes us about four years old. For some reason we were placed in my brothers' room. We didn't nap, but instead the devil got into us and we proceeded to tear up the room. I don't know if it started with a demon or a dare, but before we were through the room was destroyed. Not even my brother Steve's brand-new box kite, which I don't think he had even flown yet, was spared. I'll never forget how sad and ashamed I felt when I saw his face. He stood in the doorway and his face crumpled into tears as he looked over the devastation.

But, when I was being good, truly good, my mother would say to me, "Oh, look, Chrissy: I see your wings budding. Look here!" She pointed to a spot just inside my shoulder blades and I would turn in circles trying to see behind me. "There," she said, "tiny little wings. Can't you see them?" When I cried, "Where, where?" she reassured me that they would grow if I would only be good.

I think I'm still by nature a pleasant person. I'm good natured and I laugh easily. I can't stay angry at someone no matter how I try. I easily forget wrongs and I rarely say mean things on purpose. That doesn't mean I don't hurt people by mistake, but I'm not vindictive in any sense of the word. But does that make me "good?"

I believe that, even though I have goodness in me, I'm not "good". My human nature, left to itself, is pretty rotten. I desperately want to be better, to get my full set of wings, so to speak. While I'm not consciously trying to improve myself every day, I do have a plan.

The main thing I try to do is to put good things inside my mind. I read great literature, listen to music that enriches my mind and soul, study great art and most important of all, I read the Good Book consistently. When I get sad or discouraged, I usually find that I've failed to "fuel-up." My storehouse has gotten low. I don't want to run dry. I know that none of these things will make me good, that only by being truly renewed in my spirit by God's grace have I any righteousness at all, but that by developing the habit of fueling up with good things will I ever have a chance of getting my wings.

When my youngest child, Ben, was about seven years old, he was sitting at the table eating breakfast before school. Beautiful music was playing on the stereo and I was busy getting his things together. When I turned towards him I saw that tears were streaming down his face. I said, "Oh Ben, what's wrong?" And he turned towards me and said, "Mom, why don't we have wings?" I suppose the music had touched his tender spirit and made him want to soar like a bird. I don't know where it came from but I said to him, "Because then we would have one thing less to look forward to when we get to heaven."

I don't think we will, like Clarence in It's a Wonderful Life, all become angels nor that we have to earn our wings when we get to heaven. But Ben was sharing my life-long desire to soar on wings of beauty and goodness. Next time you see me do something good, you'll know that I'm still trying to grow those wings.

Social Goo

Some people will never like you, no matter what.

The worst feeling is when you think they do and you go along being yourself and then find out. Do you do what I do: try to act like you think they would like you to act in order for them to like you? Ah well, I'm a middle child. I do things like that.

But this rarely works. They know you're acting and are easily disgusted by your irrational behavior. It could be that you're loud or obnoxious, or self-centered, or that they are jealous of you or you remind them of someone else. They just don't like you.

Not liking people comes natural. What I mean is, once you actually get to know someone, it becomes second nature to judge their actions and worse, motives. It's the simplest thing to jump to conclusions and make assumptions. It's easy to misinterpret words. It's incredibly easy to dislike someone who is smarter, prettier, more clever than you. What is unnatural is to work at liking ornery, talkative, self-centered, bossy, boring, (your word here) people. You know, most of us.

Don't we all have certain friends or family that we accept, excuse, forgive and include in our lives? What makes them tolerable and not others? There must be some lubrication that greases the societal machinery, some special goo that makes it possible to have fellowship with certain fellow humans.

Perhaps this lubricant is common courtesy or respect. If you treat people as if you like them, then you might be surprised at the change. Either they've risen to the kindness you've extended them or your perception of them has changed. I think there is something in the Bible about treating others the way we would like to be treated. Hmmmm. Sounds like good social goo to me.

Prayer of Forgiveness

Something I said or did or didn't do or couldn't do has pinned me like a butterfly to a board.

I am bound. Captive. Held for ransom.

I am muted. Silenced. Stifled, like a hand over my mouth; violated, violent.

I am baffled. Wounded. Confused.... as if my world is tilted, I stumble.

I am stunned. Impoverished. Powerless to improve or disapprove or reprove.

I am angry. Indignant. Frustrated, I reach out, lash out, cry out.

"Forgive as you have been forgiven." I do, I do, I do;

Help me in my unforgiveness.

Let me live this prayer and employ it at all turns: that the darkness may not descend upon my light and that the one who owns it may no longer be captive to it.

Forgive, forgive, o forgive the one who wills to forgive.