February 11, 2022

How To Deal with The Ups and Downs of Caregiving

8 minutes

Written and Narrated by the author, Judith Johnson.

My mother’s given name was Grace, but we called her Cake. She and I shared a home during the last nine years of her life from age 80-89. On the balmy and beautiful Sunday of her final Memorial Day weekend, Cake fell backwards down a flight of stairs. I was a mere five yards away and out of sight when I heard her cry out a millisecond before her head hit the cabinet at the bottom of the stairs, and she landed in a thumping heap on the floor.

In that instant, every cell of my body screamed with terror as I ran to find out if she had survived and, if so, how broken she was. Blood was spouting from her head and elbow to the rhythm of her heartbeat. Calm, as she had always been in a crisis, the RN in her directed me to elevate her head, compress the wounds, and call 911.

I didn’t have enough arms and for twelve long minutes until the EMTs arrived, the rest of the world disappeared as I held Cake and felt more helpless than ever before. And my love for her was magnified more deeply than I had ever loved anyone before. My life as I had known it was disappearing from view as I became consumed by fear, shock, and my new responsibilities as a 24/7 caregiver and patient advocate in territory I had never seen before.

Yes, it was horrible. But there was also tenderness and a deepening intimacy that opened up between us that...

Continue Reading this article at InnerSelf.com (plus audio/mp3 version of article)

Music By Caffeine Creek Band, Pixabay

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