I walk most mornings in my neighborhood and, in the process, meet some very interesting folks. One of my favorites is a retired military man who carries a plastic sack and picks up the trash people throw into the street. He is a delightful guy. Our visits have revealed that he must give almost constant care to his wife who has had some very devastating health problems in addition to her fast failing eyesight.

Like most caregivers, he never complains or even talks about what this schedule of constant care is doing to him. One of the problems of care giving is there is no place to vent any negative feelings about the burden of the care. Doing so feels so selfish that most folks can’t even think it much less say it. It always ends up at “how could I complain compared to what my mate has to bear, my problems are nothing.” But the problems are real and they remain real no matter how they compare with your mate or anyone else. Not being able to just spontaneously go to the store for bread feels like being in jail no matter how much worse off your mate happens to be. 

The old idea of “I felt sorry because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet” sounds good but it doesn’t work. In the middle of a winter storm I still want shoes no matter how many others do not have feet. The burden of care is a real burden and it needs to be talked about and understood.

I finally broke through just a little bit the other day. He was talking about his wife’s condition and I simply said, “That puts a heavy load on you doesn’t it?” For the first time he began to share his side of the story. He was not angry nor was he looking for sympathy and he certainly was not putting his wife down. He was just simply explaining what his life had become and what he had lost in the process. He was not expressing regret about the losses, nor did he blame his wife, he just seemed to need to list them out loud and have them heard and understood. I could see a great sense of relief come into his eyes like he had just laid down a very heavy burden. 

I call that the slow grief of long term care. That is the subtitle to one of my books called Share My Lonesome Valley. This is the kind of grief we cannot talk about. Most of the time we cannot even allow ourselves to think about. I met a man in New Zealand who was sitting in a slump looking like he had lost every friend in the world. I sat beside him and asked what he was thinking. He said, “How dare me feel burdened because of having to take care of my father. He worked two jobs to keep us fed and educated and now I feel burdened?” We talked a long while before he could realize that he felt burdened because he was burdened. Long term care is a burden no matter how hard the loved one worked or how burdened they were with us when we were children. It is a burden and we need the right to talk about how much of a burden it is. What it feels like. What it is costing us. How tiring it is. How boring it is. How angry it sometimes makes us. All of these feelings are intensified when they are suppressed and unspoken. 

The friend I walk with carries a sack and a device that allows him to pick up trash without bending over. I had the feeling that as we talked, he was picking up the long hidden trash inside of his mind and heart, looking it over, speaking about it, having someone understand the impact of it and carefully discarding it in his trash bag. Everyone needs a good session of that. If you don’t have a trash bag try out my new email address and dump away. Doug977@gmail.com 

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