This morning Facebook notifications alerted me to someone liking a comment of mine from a long while back. I didn't remember much of it, so clicked on the lead.
It was a comment left at someone's post about the anguish of a caregiver. Our culture, sadly, does not allow us much room to channel our emotions when it comes to complex areas of guilt-grief-vulnerability-exhaustion.
"The chronic stress of care givers ages them on an average by 10years." - Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No: Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection
If I be honest, it is not easy becoming a part of anything that is assigned a 'holy' badge in our culture. Care giving being one. Under the carpet of "Sawaab milay ga", "bohat jaza hai" we brush every thing and hush the aching heart which is bursting with the pain of watching a loved one diminish every single day; the guilt of being inadequate; the burden of expectations from all the other relations one has to execute because you don't get a vacation from your other duties; the resentment of being the lone cross bearer; the anger at missing out on 'life'; the consuming fear of losing the loved one who embodies home the exhaustion of managing these emotions on top of giving your best physical and mental input ... how do we even begin talking about all this?
So going through it now, I felt that this comment made in September 2018 (EXACTLY a month before my father left the world), could probably add something to someone who might be going through a similar ordeal. We all are linked after all, in one way or the other.
Are we not? :)
Much love.
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My father has been in and out of hospital on a regular basis since 2013. Sometimes things seem to be hanging with a fragile thread ready to snap any moment, sometimes it's better. But the stress, the toll of the situation, it is almost always like a black hole that seems too eager to swallow one's positive outlook.
*hugs* I hope you forgive yourself for all the times you let the hungry black hole swallow.
I was staying at the ICU with my father suffering from a renal, cardiac and stroke condition, this April. It was my 5th consecutive night, without any break, balancing myself on the ICU plastic chair, trying to fight the black hole. The ward was dimly lit and no other patient had been critical enough for the hospital staff to insist on their families to stay. I looked at my severely unwell father and I felt cheated. For him. For myself.
So while squinting my eyes I was trying to draw strength out of the pages of "Man's search for Meaning", the 89 YO patient on a little distance woke up and sat upright on his bed. He called out to his son. The son wasn't there. He called out again.I went to him and asked if he needed something. He asked for water. I poured him some and went back to my chair by my sleeping father's bedside.
The old gentleman called out again. Noticing the duty staff busy with some patient in a critical condition, I went ahead again. This time he mentioned some needle in his arm bothering him. I realized it was beyond me to fix it and approached the nurse. She adjusted it and went back. I returned to my seat.
Only a minute or two would've passed when he called out again.
This time the head duty nurse went to him. He asked in a feeble voice, "meray sath batain karo. khamoshi se dar lagta hai."
:) DM, that moment when the nurse laughed gently at it, was actually the moment of my black hole shrinking to nothingness. Putting myself in his feeble body looking at the world from his eyes, I was suddenly brimming with what the black hole had been sapping away from me ... gratitude.
Understanding that the duty staff was short on count that night I offered to the head nurse to keep the old gentleman (gentleman through and through) company and read to him if he wanted. The nurse thanked and refused. She could manage it, she said. And there she sat listening to him from 2 till 5 am. Nodding to him, asking him questions. Smiling to him. :)
My dose of positive inspiration, at a distance of two beds. God knows I was hungry for this ... Starved to be reminded that a smile can happen anytime; that the tenderness of heart stays the ultimate glory. That we can, we are, only be the sums of our efforts.
You are a brave person. MashaAllah.
Loving, giving, feeling vulnerable, is not for the faint of heart.
I hope and pray to the Mighty Lord, Who keeps a track of the minutest of our niyyats, to reward you as per His scale for the strength you're exhibiting right now and bless your heart with His chosen most serenity. ameen.
May this phase of transition you are going through, only contribute to make you even better!
Thank you for keeping your connection with us. This world is too much in need of people who have it in them to connect, to build, to bond. Otherwise this world would be meaningless desolate only.
Image photograph by Caras Ionut.
