Who Are You Talking To?

Family relationships come in only one format: complicated.

There are some common themes that we can share amongst ourselves. An unwieldy healthcare system and certain inevitabilities of aging that connect us together. Each relationship still retains a uniqueness that takes us into uncharted psychic and emotional waters.

Real Life 101.

Developing our own balance appears to be our homework assignment in this class. The cool part is that there are really no rules. We can be as efficient or as sloppy as we want. The hard part is that we have to grade ourselves.

We are pretty tough graders.

Can We Talk?

At the risk of appearing maladjusted, I confess to speaking with the dead. Buried and long absent family members, friends, even old pets are fair game in my book. Sort of like therapists, they don’t respond but they do provide a familiar focus with which to interact. Like old friends, I speak with the dead in order to solve my current problems with the living.

Pretty crazy, huh?

I was encouraged in this form of problem-solving after discovering a wonderful movie called Mother Ghost a few years ago. Classified as a comedy/drama, I discovered a real familiarity with the characters. The way Mark Thompson’s grieving son character would bring a folding chair, sit down next to his mother’s grave, and have some frank conversations with the headstone in the cemetery lawn hit awfully close to home. My conversations tend to be more internal but the essence was there.

Know at end of day that you did the best possible – and so did the person(s) you cared for.

After a gig as a caregiver, there is a lot of personal work left for us to do. Unless you are walking away from all of the change and pretending that it doesn’t exist, which is certainly a choice (though one that I don’t recommend), we all have long conversations with ourselves. Using the dead as props or prompts can be a great help in focusing on the problem/question we are working.

Parts

Managing ourselves in order to better help others is the main order of business. I (half) joke about ghosts but those memories help us form our present. We grow when we move on from the past. Sometimes the personal work is a free get-out-of-emotional-jail card. We get to resolve old disputes and discover new insights/possibilities.

We get to grow up.

When we get to complete that circle and be the age that a loved one once was when we knew them, we get to understand their decisions from that perspective of age. Seeing the past with older eyes allows light bulbs of understanding to go on and a comfortable acceptance sets in. How cool is that?

Understanding any part of family relationships is worth every bit of work it takes to get there.

Gaining Peace

How we arrive at the growth and understanding of caring for others is up to us.

Know at end of day that you did the best possible – and so did the person(s) you cared for. There is no winning/right side of a relationship. Most of the results we experience are fuzzy and conflicted. We are sure we could have done a better job… if we could just do it over, however the house rule is that there is no do-over. All we have to work with is now. Our true job is accepting what happened and building. Everyone involved receives full benefit of the doubt.

If you’re still angry at someone (it could even be yourself), you’ve got more work to do.

It is always a less-than-perfect result in our estimation (I told you we were tough graders) but it is the best that Life has to offer us. Accept and discover.

“People you love never die. That is what Omai had said, all those years ago. And he was right. They don’t die. Not completely. They live in your mind, the way they always lived inside you. You keep their light alive. If you remember them well enough, they can still guide you, like the shine of long-extinguished stars could guide ships in unfamiliar waters.”

― Matt Haig