Recently I read Michael Wolff’s New York article “Mother I Love You” (May 2012) and found myself nodding to every other experience he had penned about his involvement with an aging and terminally ill parent. Two years ago I would have read that article and been an outsider looking in, now I have pulled up a chair at the same table.
Others are there too. Friends of mine from near and far. Male friends. Female friends. Sisters and brothers-in-law. Strangers I have never met before, whose names and lives remain a mystery to me despite the fact that I feel their pain, walk in their shoes.
We are all members of a club, us children cum-caregiver. Teachers, lawyers, clerks and wait staff, the employed and the unemployed – all now nurse maids, personal shoppers, cleaning attendants and drivers.
Some of us came to this willingly, sensing some duty as a son, a daughter, a sibling. Others of us had to be coaxed, cajoled, and enlisted by our own conscience or that of others.
Some of us dabble in our new craft, pitching in – or being dragged in kicking and screaming – when our lives or courage allow us to.
Some of us are in this fulltime, up to our elbows in soiled bed clothes and prescription dispensers. Up to our ears in demented questions, ill-tempered demands, unrecognizable speech. Up to our eyeballs in confusing insurance policies, medical jargon and unpaid bills.
Some of us spend our time with grateful and humble parents who recognize the strain taking this on puts on our own lives. And some don’t.
We walk through our old lives as if a huge crevice has opened up beneath our feet, pulling us apart like a turkey’s wishbone. One foot limping along in our old life, trying to dance the dance we know but cannot because our other foot is in some new life dancing some unknown two-step we haven’t been taught yet, but are expected to perform nonetheless. So this is what it feels like to be drawn and quartered.
If are nodding along to this and you read it, then pull up a chair and welcome to the club. If you are not, take heed, because you may see the likes of its membership in your neighbor, friend, colleague, sibling, spouse, or perhaps you someday.