Hell of a Guy

I have been pooped on, peed on, phlegmed on, and puked on.  The last years have tested me, they have tested my marriage.  Uncontrolled bodily fluids will do that.

It’s not my fault, it’s not Marty’s fault.  In point of fact she is a bit embarrassed about the whole thing.  There is nothing anyone anywhere can do about it and no one need be embarrassed, it’s part of life and all of us get to live it at some time in or life.

Before the strokes came I had no idea I would be capable of doing some of the things I’m now doing, it wasn’t, it isn’t in my DNA.  What chronic illness does, what strokes do is demand you adapt, they demand you do things you normally would run from, the illnesses demand you be someone you didn’t think you could be.

That’s the disease and that’s the real strength of marriage.  All of the crap, all of the distasteful stuff you end up learning is part of the contract, the commitment, the promise you make to someone else. 

I’m not sure I would have committed to so much if I had known so much would be asked.  I’m one hell of a husband to accept all of this, to embrace and endure the burden that is caring for a stroke patient; I am clearly a hell of a guy.

Yep….but this hell of a guy does this for a woman, a woman I fell in love with some 35+ years ago.  She’s a woman who changed her name for me, she’s a woman who stood beside me when I was unemployed and she was our sole support.  She did nothing but exude confidence in me when I was at my lowest.  

I married a woman who was smarter than me but often let me think I was smarter than I am.  She moved across the state for me, from Lubbock to Paris to Muenster to Hillsboro and Waco.  She didn’t do it without thought or complaint, but she did it because she loved me and she had promised to love and honor even during the hard times.

This woman I so selflessly sacrifice for is the woman who changed her body so we could have heirs, wonderful children; she is the woman who sacrificed herself and her career to help care for these children, the woman who would let our children eat her desert so I wouldn’t have to share. 

Yep, I’m a hell of a guy.

Marty has continued to teach this “hell of a guy”, she has continued to guide this “hell of a guy”, even in her worst of times.  She has shown me I can live up to my commitments, she has shown me I can love without condition or regret and give without resentment, she has shown me I can do what I never thought I could.  She leads me to be a better man every day.

Humans are capable of amazing things and we somehow, despite our best efforts, manage to change into what is needed.  Look around, look and in the mirror and you will find there are many out there who watch over and care for those who can’t do for themselves.  Every day people, husbands like me, wives like Marty, mothers and fathers who get poop, puke and pee on their hands, people who do very dirty jobs they didn’t choose and didn’t think they could do, but do them without thinking, without pause.  

As you get older, as your marriage or your relationship advances you simply do what you must, not because you are a hell of guy or woman, not because God only gives us what we can endure, not because we are angels.  

We do things because we love, it’s what we do when we commit, it’s what we do as decent members of humanity, it’s how we as humanity survive.  We adapt and become maybe a little better than we ever thought we could be.  

We simply do the most decent thing we have ever done.

Hell of a guy……hell of a wife.

But It Was My Birthday

Last Saturday was my birthday, my 59^th.

That weekend, Easter weekend, for my birthday, my children, grandchildren and parents came to our house on Richland Chambers reservoir to help me celebrate.  On my birthday, that last Saturday, I was the chief and only caregiver for Marty.

When your birthday is on Easter Eve and when your caregivers are all relatively young with young children you find yourselves, on days like those, flying solo because every one of them had children commitments and I can’t say no to their day off requests for children’s commitments.

In years past, and I mean before the strokes,  having the focus on anyone but me, having to care for anyone in any way on my birthday would have been a colossal downer, a reason for me to feel put upon, forgotten and neglected for my birthday.  Dressing, feeding and caring for my brain damaged wife would have been low on my priority list of birthday celebrations.

Things change.

For too many years I looked for ways to feel slighted on my birthday, I looked for people to over look my day so I could feel self righteously neglected.  Marty finally convinced me that if I wanted people to make a big deal out of my birthday, if I wanted people to make me feel special, that was okay, but you had to let people know what you wanted.  So I learned to campaign days before my actual birthday, to insist on appropriate greetings, salutations and celebrations for the day.

I say this to point out that I am not a selfless altruistic guy.  I’m still a pretty self-involved guy.  Don’t forget my birthday, it pisses me off and fulfills my basest thoughts about myself and others.

But, things change.

Marty has taught me, caring for Marty has taught me, there are greater things that we must do and in doing these things we celebrate not only others, but our own life.

I wasn’t born knowing this; in point of fact I probably didn’t truly understand it until Marty had her strokes.  Caring for Marty is hard, often thankless, lonely, frustrating, frightening and very simply the most decent thing I have ever done.  

Caring for Marty has made me better than I was.  Caring for Marty has helped me understand that there really is a greater good.  It’s one of those fake it till you make it kind of things, if you do a decent thing long enough it soon becomes okay to do decent things, it soon becomes a natural part of your life, it soon becomes apparent that doing for others is elevating for the self.

Last Saturday, my 59^th birthday, as Marty and I sat on her bed that afternoon, watching our grandkids hunt Easter eggs through her bedroom window I felt different.  Marty has insisted that I grow, Marty’s strokes, her infirmity has made me different.

Years past I would have felt sorry for myself because I was forced to care for  Marty sans a caregiver, because I was forced into some isolation with Marty, because someone else’s needs needed to come first, even on m birthday.  

Under the right circumstances I can and occasionally do fall into a self-righteous funk; but the default today is just to do, to care, to dress, to feed, to wipe, to give medicine and to do it without feeling put upon or neglected.  The default today is to do that most decent thing and to do that most decent thing without feeling morally superior, because I know I am in no way superior.

It is still a daily struggle, the fight between helping and wanting to be helped, it is easy to fall into the victim role of why did this happen to me.  But then I realize, it didn’t happen to me, I’m just the guy helping the one it really happened to, even on my birthday, I’m just the  guy coming to grips with the beauty of caring.