Running Rivers

 

Rivers, running water has always been a metaphor for our life’s journey.  Water is the essence of our life.  I love being on the water.  Metaphorically, I see all of us on the same river, in different boats, tubes, kayaks or something floating with the current.  The river keeps us moving on your journey.

We all get on at different times, we all move down the river at different speeds using different and original ways to stay afloat in the river.  Sometimes the water is smooth, and you have to paddle, sometimes it’s dry and you have to portage, sometimes it’s a raging current with rapids and rocks.  The river, life, is never static, it never sits still.

I always felt like, as a caregiver, Marty and I got out of the river back in 2005 with her first stroke.  Her illness put us in dry dock, and we got stuck in the mud of the riverbank.

The river kept flowing, the different boats with our family, friends and fellow humans kept moving down river.  You cannot stop the water, you cannot stop the flow, you can’t stop the boats, kayaks, and tubes from moving down to the next bend in the river. 

As Marty and I sat on the bank dealing with our new life we watched the river flow by us, watching as all we ever knew, all we were engaged with moved on down the river without us.  The river keeps moving and everyone on the river keeps moving with the flow.  Life moves on and if you are on the side, it leaves you sitting on the bank.

The bank of the river is neither bad nor good.  People moving on with their lives, paddling down the river, doing the back stroke, are living, moving with the flow and continuing their journey as they should.  On the bank, watching, you know you are missing fundamental evolutionary changes occurring in people’s lives and ideas. 

It is part of life.

And then, when you, who has been caring for their spouse, their parent, their child,  or their grandchild start to put your foot back in the river, when you consciously make the decision to launch your dinghy in the river again, you come to the realization you have missed some stuff. 

You have not evolved in the same way or same rate as your friends and family who have been pushed down stream from you.  You discover there are new people, new thoughts, new ideas, new ways of doing things and you missed out on that transition. 

You find yourself in the flow not really knowing what the new relationships and ideas are.  You are out of the flow with life.

I suspect that’s why, when people try to get back into that flow they are slow to understand new rules, they are hesitant to make commitments, they are a little reluctant to engage in the same way they did before.  Fear of not knowing how life and people have changed makes you a different kind of stranger.

I took care of Marty for 14 years.  For the first five I did nothing but be with Marty.  With the help of my family, friends, and exceptionally reliable care givers I started to push my boat back into the water.  I was scared I would not know how to row, how to get to the middle and how to stay close enough to Marty so I would not ever leave her behind me.  

I am still a little scared and as it turns out commitment phobic.  So for all of us who have stood on the bank and watched life move forward, bear with us, maybe someday we will catch up to you after we get over the sea sickness

Pride Doesn't Make You Fall

There is a difference between being proud of something and being prideful.  It’s a small semantic difference but an important one.  One can be proud without hubris…..hubris makes us prideful.

The Proverb saying “pride goes before the fall of humanity” points to hubris, that feeling that we are high, strong, powerful and untouchable.  Pride, being proud, is not hubris, it is taking comfort in things with you and around you that make you feel worthy, that make you feel you are accomplished, not superior.

The things people take pride in can help you understand them, what drives them, what they spend their time on, what their priorities are.  We talk about the things we are proud of, we polish them, we groom them, we display them to give us part of our sense of worthiness.

Okay….I’m making these statements as proclamations of fact.  They are like a lot of my facts; they are facts to me until one of you convinces me differently.  Go ahead, make my day.

It helps you to know my bride, Marty, a bit when you understand and know the things she is most proud of, those things in her life that build her sense of being.  If you ask her she doesn’t think about it at all, the first thing is always, our children, Matt and Erin. 

 

Marty has always been proud to be a mother.  She was a natural, not perfect, but really really smart and loving with our kids. 

She is practically boastfully proud of both Matt and Erin.  If you ask her, what she is most proud of, they are the first and often the only thing she will offer.  When I asked her why she was so proud of them she answered very simply, “They have become very good people.”  That’s the perfect answer.

Marty is proud of her education, shoot we are all proud of her education.  I remember when she finished her dissertation and received her doctorate we all felt like we had accomplished something.  Yes, we all took credit for something that she alone achieved, but we, me, our kids, her parents, were all invested in Marty’s efforts.  She enlisted all of us in her pursuit and when she accomplished her goal we all were proud of her and the achievement itself.

Marty has always been proud of her heritage, she took pride in where and who she came from.  Her upbringing in the panhandle of Texas by a man who was a self made agricultural entrepreneur made her feel good about herself.  She always saw herself as someone who could do anything, which came from the parents who told her she could do and survive anything.  Guess what….she has survived anything.

This brings us to her taking pride in the seemingly simple task of surviving.  If you ask Marty about pride she talks about surviving the strokes, but it’s more than her just surviving the events.  She is proud of the fact she has survived the strokes but she also is proud that she has survived the procedures, that she has survived the indignities of intimate care with her dignity intact, that she has kept her humor when so many events were humorless and that she has survived the endless gauntlet of giving others control over her everyday life.  

Pride is not a bad thing; taking pride in yourself is not inherently bad.  The things we take pride in are clearly important to us, maybe the most important things in our lives, maybe they are the things that help define us to ourselves and to other people.

I’m proud Marty is still here, I’m proud we have made a life in the midst of this new normal, I’m proud of the care all of us, together, have provided for Marty. 

See, it works; you get a clearer picture of me too.

Three Kinds of Love

“There are three kinds of love,” she said as she was holding court at our supper table.

Marty was listening and eating a little at a time; I was watching and listening to Renea, the caregiver who was holding court.  I was listening, mostly, partly I was listening for my opportunity to weigh in on the discussion; trying to think of what you are going to say really limits understanding, but not in this case.

 “There are three kinds of love.  The I’m in love with you “if” kind, where someone loves you if you do something, there’s the I’m in love with you “because” love, “because” you do something for me, and there’s the I love you “ in spite of” what you do kind of love.”

I stopped, started and stopped again and reserved comment while I played her words in my brain.  In a very simple, somewhat skeptical take on love she had described the romantic feeling, probably too simply, but fairly accurately. 

Part of what I heard her say reflected the cynicism of someone who has been loved poorly, part of what I heard her say reflected reality, part of what I heard her say were my own words coming back to me, a recognition that the people we love, the good people we love will invariably fail us from time to time.  Expecting the people I love to fail is my own brand of cynicism.

I know it’s too simple but it applies, it applies to my own life.  I didn’t fall in love with Marty as part of a bargain, an “if” kind of love.  Yes, there was a “because” factor, not “because” she did things for me or to me or because she had things.  I loved her “because” she was smart, funny, attractive and bold.  I have stayed in love with Marty “in spite of” a whole lot.  I suspect she can rightfully say the very same thing.  

We succeeded in our marriage “in spite of” what we said and did to each other.  I love Marty “in spite of” the strokes.  I love Marty “in spite of” all of the things we have gone through, all of the years of growing up, all of the years of maturing, all of the lunacy of a long relationship.

Bear with me because it will all make sense.

Yesterday I barked, I barked for good reason, I barked out of emotional fatigue and frustration, a very reasonable reaction.  The constancy of care giving, of worrying, of just doing everything gets to me some times and I just wear out emotionally.  Unfortunately the result is jerkishness on my part and guess who bears the brunt of that jerkishness?  Marty Jean, she’s the closest and safest target.

This time Marty barked back, bless her soul.  As she lay on her back in her bed she explained in very precise words that her end of this whole stroke deal pretty well sucked too and that maybe she got the worst end of the deal.

I was a little taken aback by the flash of the old Marty and I took a breath and started to rationalize my behavior and explain to her I wasn’t just mad at her and I wasn’t trying to take out my anger out on her; all of the words vaguely familiar from years of previous arguments.

I put my left arm under her shoulders and my right arm under her knees and I lifted and twisted her to a sitting position on the side of her bed.  As I put my arms under hers to help her stand she looked at me and said, “Well we need to hire someone to take this shit.”

“What shit?” I asked.

“Your frustration, hire someone for you to be mad at, I don’t need this shit.”

“We can’t hire someone for me to get mad at, no one would do that.”

She paused as I pulled her up from the bed to standing and as I was lifting her left leg and pivoting her on her right to sit in her wheel chair she said, “Sure we can, there are a lot of people who are at home putting up with the same thing for free, someone will do it for a buck.”

“Yeah right.”

I guess Marty loves me too and maybe, just maybe, Marty has to love me in “spite of” the shit I dish out from time to time not “because” I help take care of her.

By the way, if you are interested in the position of shit taker just let me know, there are no real benefits and it doesn’t pay very well but you do get to hang with Marty and that’s sort of fun.

Marty's People

Marty has brought so many new people into our lives.  It’s a natural consequence of major illness.  You need help; you need help from people you might never have met otherwise.  Marty’s new life has shown us so much and so many new people.

She came to us about seven years ago this month, a new caregiver, the diminutive sister of another of Marty’s caregivers.  She drove up in an old, white, beat up mini-van.  We knew nothing of her or her life, she knew little of ours.  It’s been seven years since she started making a difference in our lives and we in hers.  Our life got better the day she parked in front of our house.

Marty and I struggled in those first months after the 2^nd stroke.  We struggled those first years to find the right caregivers, the kind of people who would really care for and care about Marty, the people who were honest, the people who would come to work, the kind of people you could invite to share all parts of your life.  We kissed a lot of frogs and sent them on their way, we found a few princesses but too often they moved on to other castles.  

This woman came and stayed.

We didn’t know her full story it at the time; we didn’t know she had lived in that beat up van for a few days prior to coming back to Waco from Austin.  We didn’t know her husband had bolted leaving her with three young kids, a new born, a mountain of debt and no place to be.  

It’s an all too common story.  She had her first baby when she was 15.  She is the living embodiment of why sex education is important.  She knew what she was doing, but she didn’t really understand the potential consequences of what she was doing.  She was a baby having a baby.

She got married to her baby’s father because it was what seemed right.   After they were married, after the birth of her son, for reasons I don’t really understand or need to understand, she had two more children before she was 20.  At 20 she was the mother of three, she was still just a young girl, a girl with a high school education, a strong work ethic, a wonderful mind and some dreams, a loving heart and a quirky life view.

She worked at McDonald’s to support her family, she eventually managed a shift at McDonald’s owing to her work ethic and smarts.  She went to school some and became a Certified Nursing Assistant and almost a nurse, she just didn’t finish.

The father of her children, her sort of husband, was not really someone she ever thought she would stay with and she didn’t and of course he didn’t take any responsibility for their children.  It was just her and the three loves of her life.  

Then in the process of caring for a dying older woman she met husband number two, a guy who was smart, educated and different.  She fell in love with the different and the smart not realizing he didn’t have substance.

The five of them moved to Austin, she worked, she got pregnant again and the smart and different guy turned out to be not that different after all and bailed right after their only child was born.  He ran up debt and financial commitments that she couldn’t keep and while she was still recovering from a poorly done Caesarian she had to leave their home.  She did the only thing she knew to do, she continued to work as a nursing assistant, living out of that beat up white mini-van.

It was shortly after that event that she came to Waco to work as a caregiver for an agency in Waco.  The man with the fancy education and no heart came back to her and they found a place to live together in Waco.  Her sister, one of the few caregivers we had found we liked was moving on to a better paying job and recommended the woman to us.  That’s when we met, she driving the sorry old white van, me looking for some way to control life with Marty.

She brought a sense of comfort to both Marty and me.  She came to work, she was smart, she was dependable, she had initiative, she worked extra and she clearly cared for Marty, it was easy to see, you could actually feel it.  She was confident in what she was doing and I finally found someone I could trust.  Finding her was the turning point in our new normal.

She came to work every day, working long hours, working extra hours when they were available to support her family.  She was the caregiver where I could express my anger, my frustration, my angst.  She absorbed it too much and only once or twice did she bark back because somehow she knew that my ability to be angry in front of her, with her, meant I trusted her completely.  

The father of her fourth child, the one who made her homeless, the one who begged his way back, left again, of course.  The upside was she finally understood and figured the guy out, he was gone for good.

Somewhere along the line this woman, with minimal help from government grants (today no help because of budget cuts), with no help from either of the father’s of her children, started back to school.  She pieced together on-line school to finish her bachelors and eventually was accepted into Baylor University’s doctoral program in Psychology.

She has married again, this time she has married a man even I approve of, like it matters.  Today, this woman who so easily could have been a statistic, a single woman of four who let her life’s circumstances drive her into perpetual poverty, cares for her kids, cares for Marty, cares for her new husband, excels at academia,  does her internship at the Veteran’s Administration and even, once in a while, takes care of me.  

We have seen this young woman move from the lowest parts of life to the precipice of triumph.  She has seen us through some of our darkest days and has brought a smile and a light to us at a time it didn’t seem possible. This May she will graduate, she will be the 2^nd person from my house, the 2^nd person from our family to earn her doctorate from Baylor, the 2^nd psychologist to come from our home. 

 It’s bittersweet for Marty and me because soon she will go, she will finish the first part of her dream.  She will show her children, she will show the world that you can rise, that you can shine, that you can reach for dreams and sometimes those dreams start to come true. 

It makes me sad to know she will leave us, just as it made me sad when our son Matt left, just as it made me cry when our daughter Erin left the house.  It makes me proud that this woman, who has been a light in our life, will move on to something bigger and better and that she will be able to be more than what her circumstances might have dictated.

We will miss her, Marty will miss her care, I will miss her smile and her conversation.  We are so very proud to have been a part of her life.