Caregiving really amplifies your Life. Boy howdy.
While I am in recovery for my own personal choices earlier in life, I think I am also in recovery for the work I did as a caregiver. In the years of working in Dad’s lifestyle, I learned more about myself. Since the end of that period, I have learned more about him and my relationships.
I should write about this stuff.
Hot
Such an odd paradox. When taking care of Dad, I focused on practical matters. I was good at that. Only at that time, it was on a tremendously larger scale than I had known. Decisions carried greater consequences and were made in compressed time.
In some ways, caregiving at that time resembled med school. Figure out what needed to be done first. Do it. Move on to the next in priority. No thoughts or reflections on what was happening. (A luxury .) Just get to the task at hand.
Amazing endurance I achieved back then. Never slowing down. Never wavering. Until the day a sibling walked up and said they were taking over Dad’s care. Papers were signed and that was that.
I considered for a brief moment that I should fight for control of the situation but that wisdom/energy that had been driving me up to that point just said “Here are the keys. Good luck.” I hadn’t realized that I didn’t have anything left. It took somebody else to point out that I was empty.
Cool
A cluster of funerals of family members that occurred around the time of his passing, all play prominent parts in my memory. Each is distinct yet I see how each contributes to the restructuring of who I am.
Not the whiny crying sort of memories. Loss is inevitable and we all need to get up to speed with that concept. No, this was encountering and engaging real life for the first time. No pretty flowers and speeches. Just loss and with it, maturity.
Tough love.
Taking a grounded view of the personalities and relationships of those heady days of caregiving, I now see things for what they were, not for what I want them to be.
So with Dad, I now look at him with all of the filters off. Asking questions of people who knew him long ago and hearing the answers not as a son, but as someone who loved him. Warts and all.
New
I still find it a bit unnerving to hear myself say something that sounds so clearly like Dad. And when family comment that I remind them so much of Grandpa. I really feel that ghost in the room.
But I am not my father. I have learned from him, by both the things he did and the things he didn’t do.
Most of all, I work very hard at not letting the losses in life frighten me. I don’t want to be like him. Which I am beginning to suspect, may have been his intention for me all along.
Dad's Back 