As a caregiver, you have to care for people, taking care of their needs and maybe their wants.
But you also have to make them feel cared for. It’s not just the actions, it’s the kind word or the joke that make things different. I often get crazy when I just want to roll my mother to the can but she wants to talk, and I know that being listened to is important to her, even if it’s just another repeat to me.
I spoke to my sister yesterday and she told me that the little $10 cigarette-lighter FM MP3 player from Deal Extreme that I gave her this weekend had failed. I promised her the second one from the shipment of two.
Later, I got into my car and found that my player (and the 4Gb card in it) had been swiped by some little hoodlum in the neighborhood. I liked having a moment hearing my own choice of jazz chantuse, but that was taken, two days after my primary MP3 player went flaky (and I am still chasing SanDisk for an RMA)
But I had promised the second player to my sister, so I gave it to her.
She offered to push it back to me, and that was nice.
But what she didn’t do was ask for the URL so she could order a few. Heck, she didn’t even offer to sew up the big rip on the leg of my jeans, and she is trained as a fabric artist.
My family, well, this whole idea of making someone feel taken care of, well, not so much. You see, it demands that you see, understand, identify and acknowlege someone’s needs or desires and then get ahead of them. I gave my sister a few gifts and services last week. from some $1 reusuable bags to programming her new converter & installing the voice recorder software, to the MP3 player, but for my birthday all I got was an e-mail message.
I suspect there are at least two factors at play here. One is a lack of habit of empathy, but the second is a fear that my needs are so denied in the family, me being the target patient, that entering them is a mess. My sister says “I’d like you to see a dentist,” but when I explain how hard that process is, she just fades. I keep finding solutions for my family members, but it feels to me that they keep shrinking back.
I understand that they may not be able to take care of all my needs.
But to not feel taken care of, well, that’s always tough.
That’s why I work to make them feel taken care of.
It’s important, I think, that the ones you love actually feel loved, and don’t just have to know it somewhere on the surface.
