I got up around 5:30 this morning for a little extra time to myself. I'm working on an essay. I have more painting to do to finish the laundry room. I'm still scrubbing the grout in the front hallway. You know. Stuff. Stuff I'd prefer to do alone.
It was some time after 7 (well over an hour earlier than usual) that my mom woke. Yes, I sighed a guilty ugh. I was sitting on the couch with my computer on my lap when I heard her go from her room into the bathroom. Clatter-crash-thump. I flew to the bathroom door.
She'd dropped her cane.
The booster rockets of adrenaline had already fired. It's impossible to call them back once they've left the launch pad and I orbited around mad and crazy for a while, grumbling about what a shitty way it was to start the day. Of course it would of course been a lot shittier if she'd fallen.
I've been exchanging caregiver communiqués with a new friend for the past couple of months. I wrote to him immediately. I told him I was seeing into my future and it looked just like the present. He wrote back and told me to stay the heck out of the future.
This is how I survive. Writing it all down. Writing it here. Writing it to this friend who's been taking care of his dad, reading what he writes back.
Things go bump and thump and moan and groan quite frequently here in Pillville. I'm in this house most days for 21 hours. Some days it's a little less. Some days it's all day. On Thursdays, I'm out most of the day. But even when I'm sleeping, I'm listening, waiting for the next moment that requires me to propel myself down the stairs. So guess what? I'm always living in the future. Hell, I'm even sleeping there.
I need to rocket back to the present.
7 comments:
I keep hearing sound-bites from disparate sources, including, according to my sleep- deprived mind, the Dalai Lama, that the present doesn't exist. Only past and future.
You do realize you can't keep this up forever, right? Be all the Buddhist you want but the reality of the situation is that the human body and brain cannot do what you're doing forever. Of course I have no answers but if you end up in the hospital, what will your mother do then?
My husband always tells me "Do not make a problem until there is a problem"...I do my best to follow that advice. I am like you ...I will continue to support my mom until the end....it is a honor and a privilege to me. (though I am two years behind you so you kind of show me the future)
Even these comments are confusing to me. The life of the perpetual caregiver. Sigh. Some days the future saves me even as the past is killing me slowly. The present is -- well -- always there. Or here.
there is Back to the Future, there is The Now, there used to be The Past... it's all words.
Please, don't you go blaming yourself for not being the perfect little Buddha. You are doing GREAT, even if it doesn't feel like it. Today.
Do you know Tara Brachs work? Maybe try listening to it? Apart from wisdom, she has a great sense of realism AND humor.
Hi Elizabeth, we seemed to have commented at the same time - and a bit along the same lines
It will break your heart when you no longer have to do this and it will shatter it even more in those moments when you realize you are free in a way you have not been in years. Everything in its time. Your friends advice--stay the hell out of the future--is sound. Sending love.
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