accepting help

Under great stress I go to the hairdresser. Don't you? So back from my latest wedding gig, I go for a "do".

No words. Very tired. (Messy) Said "help". Got some. (Lather) Feeling better. Still silent. (Rinse) Getting perspective. Said "HELP". (Repeat) Some things just need time and attention. Some need action. And some just are.

Resting and being is helpful.

Just tired. Thanks. for the help. For the break. For the moments of clarity. For the time.


I am never this silent at the hairdresser. I dare not say it aloud. The terrifying truth. Only in heart does that spectre burn. Horrifying is my reality. In the middle of the ceremony I forgot the groom's name!

Someday my words will return, unlike mom's. Is it stress? Is it menopause? Is it ... "IT"?

HELP ME GRIMELDA!!!!

Please...let me find my words again. Let this be anything else. Once again that niggling fear. Always there. Like the dull hum of cicadas in summer heat. The distant rumblings of thunder echo on the mountains. The storm may never come here. I still smell the wind, and get prepared.

Rest.


AMEN.

and another option....

Today I played. Really played. A good friend from life is also dealing with elder care stress and today we played. Both of us got in my car...drove to the big city and spent the day doing the tourist things we did a lifetime ago with our young children. This time, instead of their wiping noses, making a mad dash to the bathroom so they could get to the potty on time or avoiding the noisy exhibits so as to minimize whining, we went as ourselves. I still wiped noses, my own. We still sprinted to the bathroom but this time I only had to keep track of myself! And we went to the lightning show and actually watched it. I laughed! I feel better too. This was a really fun time. I have been trying to balance without all the parts in play. Work and play!

Thank you Grimelda. That was a great day!
Amen and halleluyah.

redefining normal

Today was really difficult. I left my mom in the hands of her extremely competent caregiver, a lovely woman from Ghana that I found through an agency, and escaped. I am not sure when exactly it became so difficult to be around mom during the day. It could be when she began fighting me about everything. Suddenly it seems she disapproves of so much I do, or try to do. She complains about the time I spent at the hospital.Now it is also about how I make toast,or planted flowers, even what friends I chose to see, when and how often. I struggle to understand why this conflict.My guess is it is akin to frustration. It could be her ever increasing competency losses, and all that represents. It could also be the lingering wisdom, buried under all her aggression and confusion, that I desperately need and we cannot access. It could be the new behaviors she cannot change yet that I find embarrassing, extremely inconvenient and emotionally draining. It could be that I have just gotten tired always being questioned.

At any rate, it has become unpleasant for me to spend long periods of time with my mother. Her needs seem to always trump mine until I lose myself in her care. I know that trap and am trying to avoid it. What is worse is it isn't just her needs but her every desire that has become mine to fulfill. How did this happen? Maybe it is because I have begun to resent not getting to eat food I like, go to church unencumbered, Or even decorate my home as I like. New normal now has negated my ability to plan my day without a power struggle. This is all so very new, and now constant. It wears me out.

So...I bought some time from the caregiver and I went back to work. I first went to my campus job, always slow during the summer, where I enjoyed lunch with four newer to me students. It was surprisingly odd, as what had been a pretty stable group of religious seekers just a few weeks ago morphed into an eclectic band of unknown anxiety ridden lost souls during the summer months. It was different, but still good. That filled three hours. After the campus lunch I went to the hospital getting a few precious hours of hospital time in while my extremely competent replacement is being oriented.

I am nearly out of my hospital job. My ill colleague has returned,still very shaky, from her extended leave. I cannot help but worry for her as I think she came back before she was ready. When I decided I had to leave this particular chaplaincy a mere six weeks ago myself and gave notice of my intention to be releasing the position to my supervisor, arrangements were made and my replacement hired. She began work the same day that my ill colleague returned, just a few days ago. As NewCHaplain is being brought on board I agreed to help the team and do a few more hours while she is brought up to speed.

As I enjoy the day I become aware of this trap too. I should have just left. It was hard to leave and the seduction of the ministry is strong. I love the work so much and my willpower is weak. I have friends there and with mom I am extremely isolated at times. I worry I will lose my balance again and would continue in this bad job after leaving if they only ask.

A few hours more, seeing patients and helping with office clean up, navigating the computer programs and explaining subtleties of hospital policies and politics, I am once again on my own and headed home.

Oh great spirit,help.

I am surrounded by folks that are better at what I do than I am. In theory that is good and normally I would rejoice to have such great colleagues. And actually I do! Right now, I am just so sad. I have failed in my heart, somehow, to be the caregiver I wanted to be, and that mom needs. I have failed to balance things enough to keep a beloved hospital ministry going. But mostly, I have failed to maintain the connections that I need to stay strong in my faith.

Grimelda shows me the traps of this thinking. She reminds me things are meant to change. Normal is fluid by design. When I stumble the ones who are given the gifts I drop are grateful and all is not lost, just different. Mom likes her caregiver. Her caregiver likes her. She enjoys her work as much as I enjoyed mine. The students will return, always new ones anyway, in September. New Normal can also be good. As River changes its path, it is still a river. All stages of the tree are beautiful in their own way and many depend on it to thrive. Change is neither good nor bad. It just is, and that is glorious.

AMEN

Pearls

It has been weeks since I could find my voice again. Deciding to leave my hospital job drowned me in self loathing and defeatism. I could not move either way. I was stuck deep in the quicksand of surrender.It is a lonely, frightening place.

What changed? How have I once again found a way to write my soul? Many little things and nothing. Mom has progressed along her terminal road. My hopes of hanging out and just being with her have simply dissolved. Now I long to sit with the ill and dying for a break from her.

Save me from myself Grimelda.

Call Waiting- Call Forwarding-Wrong Number?

I indeed feel in the desert now. I know there is life here too. Not the green familiar. No. Not the lush blooming delicate flowers. Not the soothing green forests. Not even the wet mud of melt and infernal buzzing of bloodsucking insects! This is more than summer. It is an internal climatic shift. My life mirrors the world around me after all.
I must learn from the lizard, the tumbleweed and the baking rocks. Find that new beauty. Right now it just feels dried up and cooked.
After two months of covering for the absent full time chaplain I am cooked. I kept cutting the hours, moving them around, dividing them up into smaller segments, and even so, I cannot make it work. The pay is so small as a per-diem employee that my take home is less than I am paying the caregiver for mom. The reality that I am paying to work, literally, has finally lifted the blinders. I am leaving the job. It makes me sad. I am fighting the grief and building resentment. I also know there really is no other option for me that makes any sense and that makes me angry. So, will I go back when mom progresses and is gone? Will I go do some other chaplaincy that is perhaps more manageable? Or, hope springs eternal, better compensated? Will I just give up? Right now, I don't know. I do know that this adventure is over and it is time to let it go. I loved it while it lasted.
Go with God, hospital chaplaincy. Rest in Peace.
Amen.

self care splatter

I fell off the self care wagon. I have not kept my promise to myself to write everyday. I have been sleeping. That is good. Probably. I have been mostly eating right. That is almost true. I am taking my vitamins and one medication more regularly (almost 50% compliant)...I suppose that is progress. I have been working too, too much.While rewarding spiritually, it is draining physically and the time to be....vanished. That has been problematic. I have missed therapy, my women minister's support group, my denominational ministers group, my standing monthly lunch date, my friendly breakfast gathering, two appointments for doctors. The two retreats I promised myself, one after the other. I am late to everything. My dog and cats have not been to the vet or groomer. Mom missed a follow up eye exam. I didn't even make it to church for six weeks unless I was preaching.

I think I have answered my question. No. I cannot do it all.

Grimelda...guide me to release what I must with joy. Aid me in halting my headlong dash towards exhaustion. Teach me to love choosing myself sometimes. Care for those I must let go to do that. Help me grieve this loss without hurting those around me in my ambivalent pain.

Amen

a fear filled glimpse

I hear the abrupt coughing of either Mom or my daughter break a silence that, until now, has only held the sound of cats scratching their ears over refrigerator hum. The information overload of the day has unsettled me. My recent sleepy bliss is once again punctuated with unsought midnight ramblings. My mind will not still.

I began the day with mom care as usual, but she is getting weary, trying to do too much all at once after being so very sedentary for months. I find myself unable to ignore her coughing, her hairball clearing snorts that must be the result of our family cold, the spring pollen, the overstimulated senses and just too much icky in the sinuses. Mornings are long and quite undignified lately.

This one was much the same. I made the coffee, I wrote out her calendar, I put together her breakfast and prepared my own satchels for a day of work. When the aide arrived, I left the home behind and went about my workday as planned. I went first to the Alzheimer's care giver's support group meeting where we were scheduled to have a speaker. I have arranged to be on call off site so that I can attend these meetings. That has been working well for all. I have given up, at some point, the idea of only doing one thing at a time. I am unsure how to change it back now, to focus things more, or if I should even try.


Before I went in, my cell phone rang. I have been trying to close a communication loop with my stricken friend through her husband for four days. It was him. Turns out she is far more ill than I knew. The stress of the work we share, coupled with inadequate support and self care has resulted in a serious health crisis. It looks like possible burnout to me. My heart sinks. There really is nothing much I can do for any of them. I will do what I can, and for now, that is not much. I pray. For her. For her family. For strength and for faith. For guidance. (Are you there ,Lord?)

I go in. The regulars are remarkably missing. The speaker is quite good and the resources shared are excellent. The new folks that have come to the presentation are varied in their relationship to the disease. The gathering includes people who are just beginning to deal with a recent diagnosis, or with the fear of one as their beloved or they themselves struggle with memory issues. I didn't expect to be the veteran in the group. Revisiting those early times, listening empathetical to their stories, I notice how very far mom and I have come already. Yes I am tired and at the moment writing away my insomnia, but we have managed to navigate quite a few of the crises of the early stages already.

I hear again, with recently pricked ears, how important it is to take care of the caregiver. Fueled by ravenous determination, I pick up pamphlets and business cards, and ... my beeper goes off. LOUDLY. I am immediately filled with undeniable anger. I don't want to go. I want to stay with the caregivers group and be fed. But that is not the plan I made. It is the hospital and I answer.

I pray my way down the street to the parking lot. I pray my way to the emergency entrance. I pray my way to the bedside and , indeed, now I am here. Now I am the chaplain and now my prayers are with the patient and her family. This is immediate. The need is intense and just having "the chaplain" here eases the tension in the room. My anger is gone. It isn't me. It is "the chaplain". By answering that call I observe the workings of Grace. At this moment it is clear! This is what I am called to do. How can I give this up?

Afterward, grabbing lunch from the snack bar, I wonder. What is the price I pay for being a caregiver? Can I stop, even if I choose to? Is it humanly possible to do all this? Will I too get hauled off in an ambulance for giving too much away? What will happen to my coughing family if I do? And then the BIG FEAR sneaks up. Will I also get Alzheimer's?

Yes. I am afraid. It was pointed out to me that the opposite of fear is NOT bravery, as I had previously believed. The opposite of fear is faith. To keep faith strong, like a muscle, it needs exercise. I exercise my own faith with prayer. The way I am praying lately, I could be an Olympian. I am also, slightly aware that I think this is sort of crazy. Let's face it, I talk regularly with an invisible being. How different is that from someone who talks to a six foot tall invisible dinosaur named Grimelda? If being this prayerful is madness, then it is this divine madness that will have to see me through.

Precious creator: I seek Comfort for my dear friend in her pain. May she know that you are with her, and myself, as we both struggle to keep ourselves together. I struggle to care for myself. Grant me sleep, and good sense. Restore us all to health. But mostly, help me to keep my perspective, my balance and my center. I celebrate your precious gift of time with mom and my daughter, my loving husband. I also appreciate the gifts of compassion I have experienced through Grace. May all of us move forward renewed in our faith. And say hello to Grimelda for me.

Amen