Last year at this time I was balls deep in zoom kindergarten and watching my alzheimer's mom stress about the declining of her mind. While my college daughter did zoom college in her room and my 8th grader did zoom from her bed. I'm not sure how I even did that, home on lockdown, things getting done in a remotely remote way.
This year one daughter gone now, one up at the high school, even though isn't she such a small fish for a big place, the place the other kids launched off from and never came back, off into their growing bigger and away.
They didn't go far. But.
There's still this mom and her holey brain, and her legs don't work now, and she requires tending, feeding, wiping. Yesterday I thought man what if I'm through. How do you quit a situation like this?
I never quit anything, but man, should I?
My alternatives are like a pee filled hallway in a building with other dementia patients, and my mom wheeled into an activities room where her main activity would be crying, and she wouldn't be the only good nurse there cause her nursing skills are all used up now, so there'd be no good nurse there, she would be doing the patient role. The part of nurse would be played by another, less loving more overworked person.
Her future is not all my problem, of course. She has enough money to afford a place for awhile. But the same problems are still the same. She wouldn't have her dog. She wouldn't have us. Those are the two things she does seem to notice, and appreciate. And the sunshine.
I guess if I can take the future off the boards and only focus on this one day, this one small group of hours, can I make it a good group of hours for all of us without hurting my body mind soul.
I have a really supportive family. I see that it is a huge hardship on all of us, like any lingering terminal illness of a family member. Terminal is only good in an airport. Like where Scotland is at the end.
Maybe focusing on the end as a freeing of all this tragedy, and also doing less lifting if possible.
Maybe focusing on the little pony outside in the barn who whinnies and trots over when he sees you, sure that you bring good cheer.
I feel lucky that I do indeed bring gifts with my daily care of all these living things. I feel exhausted when it seems like my body has had enough and when I miss my family, the ones who are still healthy sound and frolicking.
I feel like Covid made us all so remote, and the remote is actually lost in the bed somewhere. Like no kidding. We can't find it.
I don't know why it all had to hit us all at once, the earth in a global crisis, and the family in an illness bubble of hell. I'm not sure finding the remote is going to help.
I think finding the pieces of yourself that are still functioning, like scraped in the bottom of your heels, still safe down there away from all the important parts, I think salvaging a little of that unused part and band aiding it onto the overused, atrophied part, and eating ice cream sometimes and seeking out the sun and the flowering things in the yard, these small things are not only the whipped toppings, they are everything, and free, and in small doses. Maybe flowers hold the world together.
