I’ve been doing some middle-aged musing lately and have come to consider the importance of personal history. Once past the crises that enter everyone’s’ lives, we eventually pause to reflect on what happened. To say we are unchanged by events is to deny an essential part of what it is to be human. We grow from events until the day we die.
Part of what this writing does for me is to de-tangle my relationships in an age after caregiving. It is not really as impressive as that may sound. I just get the distinct impression that if I met an earlier version of my Self, I would only slowly recognize him. So much changes but the essence of our person is what grows over time. It is noting this growth that I savor these days. Sort of being reintroduced to the new me again and again.
Post Mortem
With my scientific training, my first inclination is to dissect out what happened to me as a caregiver.
Did I do a good job? (The best I could at the time.)
Could I have done better? (Only with a crystal ball perhaps.)
Was I a good son? (Depends on who you ask.)
Like so many of us, I am my own harshest critic. Learning so much from the caregiving experience, I want a do-over opportunity to perfect my technique. Do-overs don’t exist though, so I settle for finally reconciling the new independent me with the historical me. I know we look and sound about the same but we’re not really. It’s just that the language does not exist to where I can adequately explain the differences.
Welcome to the isolation of caregiving. A terrific adventure but you can’t get there from here.
So Happy to be Here
Something unique happens with being a caregiver. With the passing of the loved one(s), the caregiver also passes through to a new state of being. A new person emerges into an old world. A little bewildered at first but eventually getting my feet under me.
The old world continues to be defiantly indifferent to what I thought was my uniqueness. With time and reflection, I find that what I thought was uniqueness was just coming to understand how I am such a part of the world. I have learned much about my Self, which was really about the world in which I live.
Being connected is one of the best places to be.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
― T. S. Eliot
Dad's Back 