My experience of books that offer affirmations to caregivers is that they are just too damn hifalutin, artsy and self-righteously “spiritual.”
Maybe some people can see caregiving as a graceful and above the fray thing, but not me.
I see it like parenting.
Sure, it combines the spiritual, mental, emotional and physical, but mostly it’s just a struggle to get things done and keep things on track punctuated by moments of supreme poignancy.
It’s piss towels and dinner and fights, but every now and then there are touches that take your breath way. Sure, some of those are like blows to the solar plexus that knock you breathless, but others are moments of pure connection that leave you with a transcendent splendour that will stay with you.
I don’t know any way to separate parenting from the menial, or to separate caregiving from the menial. It has to be there, to be respected and be done.
For me, it’s about weaving the cerebral, emotional and spiritual into the physical routine. How can I better serve, better listen and reflect, better clarify and motivate, better empower and ennoble, better encourage change and transition in the context of the daily needs?
That’s where the challenge is for me, being above it and connected to the bigger even as I am in it and cleaning the shit.
If I don’t see the mundane as spiritual, it is impossible to value the work that needs to be done.
If I don’t value the details of life, it is impossible to make those details stand out as the gifts that they are.
If I don’t understand that little is big, that the largest possibilities of the human spirit exist in the smallest choices we make, then it is impossible to value those whose bigger days lie in the past.
If I don’t respect that fighting is life, that conflict & struggle is the way we express our humanity and shape our world, then I won’t be able to engage the efforts others put out to claim their own life.
If I don’t commit to opening to others, graciously receiving what they have to offer, then I will miss their opening and their sharing of what is most valuable to them.
If I don’t make the effort to enter the worlds of others, seeing through their eyes, then I won’t gain the gifts they offer me, gifts of seeing our shared world in a new way that may enlighten, may challenge, or may bless.
If I don’t accept the legacy they hand me, then I devalue their life and miss an opportunity to be connected to something bigger than my limits.
In the end, it’s about holding hands, holding stories and holding dreams in a shared way, shared over meals, over laughter, and over messy intimacies.
But that deeper dimension is so often missed.
Others want their relationships with the ageing and infirm to be sweet and nice, and never out of control. They want their world to remain unchanged by the challenges of caregiving, the challenges of facing messy and difficult humanity up close. We are born between piss and shit and die the same way, so our humanity needs to be affirmed, not just smoothed over with sweet platitudes that don’t honor the real blood, sweat and tears of what it takes to be in relationship with another person, especially with another person who is facing challenges of their own.
Or at least that’s my experience.
