Sunday, July 18, 2004
Stat ketchup is now being served at...
...Mom's Daily Tests and Meds. The link will take you to the first of the "ketchup" posts. Since I posted all this last night and I wanted the posts to fall in order by date and time, I had to invent times for each post. I included in these postings brief rundowns of how her recovery from the urinary tract infection is proceeding and her general reactions to the onslaught of the Cipro XR.
I was up until 0245 this morning by choice. Despite my lack of sleep I felt like musing about the dehydration issue and the issue of negligence in regards to care of Ancient Ones in a very long post. Then, when I clicked the "publish" button, I somehow lost the post. Surprisingly, I wasn't upset. I remember everything I wrote and will probably readdress this issue at some time in the future.
I also received a "comment", my first on any of my journals, on the post at which you'll arrive if you click the above link for a serving of ketchup, in case you want to take a look. It made me smile. It's from someone I think is quite a bit younger than me and has not yet been fully involved in the nurturing of others. The poster is sympathetic about the "stress" involved in what I'm doing with my mother, assumes a deleterious effect to me from the stress and advises me that there are agencies that can step in on my behalf and take care of my mother. I certainly appreciate the poster's nascent empathy; it's a promising beginning. I also appreciate the lack of knowledge and life experience behind the advice.
Over the last few days I've been corresponding with a friend with whom I'd exchanged some mutually misunderstood e's. As we worked out the misunderstanding we both candidly copped to the stress in our lives brought on by family nurturing situations within which we are involved. At one point in the coming-clear part of our exchange, in response to him mentioning the stress in his life, I "joked" that I certainly forgave him for the stress bleed from him that stained our recent communications, as, I said, stress is pretty much an hourly companion for me and probably will be as long as I am involved in taking care of my mother and I "bleed" quite a lot, myself. After sending that e I found myself contemplating the definition of "stress" and its effects.
Being alive is, by definition, stress. Complete lack of stress means complete lack of breath. The issue is how the "stress" of living is handled. There are times, as I take this journey with my mother, when I handle it well and relish the stress inherent in what I'm doing as well as the advantages of allowing myself to surrender to the dictates of that stress. There are other times when a particular situation arouses within me an antipathy that causes me to handle the stress badly, usually by trying to avoid it. In observing my history with my mother, my overriding consideration is that I'm grateful that I'm taking care of her and that I have the ability to do it as intensely as I do. I relish the molding of my character that the stress of caregiving provokes. My gratitude extends to those times when it seems as though I'm overwhelmed by stress. When I'm in the thick of it I'm grateful that my stress isn't generated from the sidelines where I could be wondering and worrying how my mother is, what her state of life is and whether she is in good hands. I'm positive, from my experience of having other people (not relatives and the few friends we have who have done this and know how to approach caring for an Ancient One) occasionally handle brief episodes of caring for my mother that if I were not doing this the stress of not knowing whether the care she was receiving was adequate for her would be worse, harder to handle, than the stress I experience as her fulltime caregiver. I cherish the opportunity to know and love my mother and the "stress" of her life in meticulous detail. When one has not been involved in intense caregiving of this nature, whether with a child, someone who is infirm or an Ancient One, one has no idea of the extraordinary bond created between the people involved and the rewards conferred by this kind of nurturing. Come to think of it, the word "stress" has two fundamental definitions, the second being "love". To live and to love, is to allow oneself to experience stress, both its challenges and its rewards. There are, I know, some subcategories of stress that are probably best avoided but overall, I think, avoidance of the stress of living and loving, no matter how intense, can become a prison in which, it is true, one may be relieved of a problem here and there but one also shuts oneself away from the joy that total involvement in the stress of living and loving confers.
As the highest tenet of Buddhism states, compassion is the path to ultimate inner peace. Compassion demands total involvement to the point of surrender. I think the societal fear many of us carry of becoming so involved that we "lose" ourselves, thus our "lives", thus risk experiencing the "bad" fallout from "stress" is based on the belief that we can "lose" ourselves, and this is a bad. I think, outside of the experience of someone with Alzheimer's feeling the loss of oneself [and I consider it debatable whether this is a loss or a traumatic conversion], if you think you've lost yourself you're not recognizing yourself. The road to inner peace is to be so involved in the "stress" of living and loving that one cannot help but identify "you" and "it" as "me". At this point stress does not take us away from ourselves and our lives. It brings to us the realization that to be ultimately self-possessed we must know that, as Lennon/McCartney said in "I Am A Walrus", "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together." This means not only accepting our "oneness" but accepting that we are, for some interesting and not yet quite determined (at the level of critical mass) reason, living in a system of separateness, both of which are components of All. In essence, the stress of seeking to be completely involved is the stress of seeking to be completely uninvolved.
I consciously accept the stress under which I now live within the context of taking care of my mother as she traverses the path of The Ancient Ones, even when I handle the stress "badly", even when I make choices regarding what aspects of this stress I will accept and which I will reject. The curious aspect of what I am doing is that the more I accept the stress of my choices in living and loving the less stressed I feel.
I'm not saying that I don't have difficulties handling the stress of living and loving as I choose. What I'm saying is that, short of death, there is no way to avoid the stress of living and loving but to create another type of perhaps more easily handled and maybe less rewarding stress. Believe me, I make these choices many times a day, readjusting my choices as I observe their effects on my mother's life and my own. Sometimes my choices isolate me. Sometimes they usher me more fully into the "stress" of life. That's the bargain I struck when I said "yes" to life.
"It's easy..." Lennon and McCartney say in yet another song, "All You Need Is Love". Well, it depends on what you mean by easy but, certainly, it's life, and it's love, and it's dynamic and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else, doing anything else right now. This is the "best" kind of "stress" I can imagine at this time. Blame it on my faulty wiring and my inadequate ability to express myself.
Yes, I'll continue to use these online journal as therapy which will include accounts of being overwhelmed by the joys and the sorrows, the clarity and the confusion and the stress I've chosen. Yes, it is entirely possible that, as I continue others besides "Mermaid" will find my account disturbing, wonder why in the world I don't pass some of this "stress" off onto others and beleive that I need an escape. Let it be known, from this time forth, no matter how often I bemoan periods of exhaustion, no matter how often I wish, out loud, that I had a partner in this who is as equally involved as me, you must also take into consideration those posts in which I fully celebrate what I'm doing. Be assured, I really don't want an escape, even when I let off steam by howling that I wish for escape. This is life, my life, this is love, my love, and I have no regrets about chosing any of it. Looking back and forward I feel lucky that I've made the choices I have in regards to taking care of my mother. I'm pleased about all the choices I've made which led up to her asking me to live the final years of her life with her in total involvement. It may not be the wisest choice for others. This is the nature and mystery of the exultant separation of the One into the Many which we experience in this system of existence. It is the wisest choice for me.
I was up until 0245 this morning by choice. Despite my lack of sleep I felt like musing about the dehydration issue and the issue of negligence in regards to care of Ancient Ones in a very long post. Then, when I clicked the "publish" button, I somehow lost the post. Surprisingly, I wasn't upset. I remember everything I wrote and will probably readdress this issue at some time in the future.
I also received a "comment", my first on any of my journals, on the post at which you'll arrive if you click the above link for a serving of ketchup, in case you want to take a look. It made me smile. It's from someone I think is quite a bit younger than me and has not yet been fully involved in the nurturing of others. The poster is sympathetic about the "stress" involved in what I'm doing with my mother, assumes a deleterious effect to me from the stress and advises me that there are agencies that can step in on my behalf and take care of my mother. I certainly appreciate the poster's nascent empathy; it's a promising beginning. I also appreciate the lack of knowledge and life experience behind the advice.
Over the last few days I've been corresponding with a friend with whom I'd exchanged some mutually misunderstood e's. As we worked out the misunderstanding we both candidly copped to the stress in our lives brought on by family nurturing situations within which we are involved. At one point in the coming-clear part of our exchange, in response to him mentioning the stress in his life, I "joked" that I certainly forgave him for the stress bleed from him that stained our recent communications, as, I said, stress is pretty much an hourly companion for me and probably will be as long as I am involved in taking care of my mother and I "bleed" quite a lot, myself. After sending that e I found myself contemplating the definition of "stress" and its effects.
Being alive is, by definition, stress. Complete lack of stress means complete lack of breath. The issue is how the "stress" of living is handled. There are times, as I take this journey with my mother, when I handle it well and relish the stress inherent in what I'm doing as well as the advantages of allowing myself to surrender to the dictates of that stress. There are other times when a particular situation arouses within me an antipathy that causes me to handle the stress badly, usually by trying to avoid it. In observing my history with my mother, my overriding consideration is that I'm grateful that I'm taking care of her and that I have the ability to do it as intensely as I do. I relish the molding of my character that the stress of caregiving provokes. My gratitude extends to those times when it seems as though I'm overwhelmed by stress. When I'm in the thick of it I'm grateful that my stress isn't generated from the sidelines where I could be wondering and worrying how my mother is, what her state of life is and whether she is in good hands. I'm positive, from my experience of having other people (not relatives and the few friends we have who have done this and know how to approach caring for an Ancient One) occasionally handle brief episodes of caring for my mother that if I were not doing this the stress of not knowing whether the care she was receiving was adequate for her would be worse, harder to handle, than the stress I experience as her fulltime caregiver. I cherish the opportunity to know and love my mother and the "stress" of her life in meticulous detail. When one has not been involved in intense caregiving of this nature, whether with a child, someone who is infirm or an Ancient One, one has no idea of the extraordinary bond created between the people involved and the rewards conferred by this kind of nurturing. Come to think of it, the word "stress" has two fundamental definitions, the second being "love". To live and to love, is to allow oneself to experience stress, both its challenges and its rewards. There are, I know, some subcategories of stress that are probably best avoided but overall, I think, avoidance of the stress of living and loving, no matter how intense, can become a prison in which, it is true, one may be relieved of a problem here and there but one also shuts oneself away from the joy that total involvement in the stress of living and loving confers.
As the highest tenet of Buddhism states, compassion is the path to ultimate inner peace. Compassion demands total involvement to the point of surrender. I think the societal fear many of us carry of becoming so involved that we "lose" ourselves, thus our "lives", thus risk experiencing the "bad" fallout from "stress" is based on the belief that we can "lose" ourselves, and this is a bad. I think, outside of the experience of someone with Alzheimer's feeling the loss of oneself [and I consider it debatable whether this is a loss or a traumatic conversion], if you think you've lost yourself you're not recognizing yourself. The road to inner peace is to be so involved in the "stress" of living and loving that one cannot help but identify "you" and "it" as "me". At this point stress does not take us away from ourselves and our lives. It brings to us the realization that to be ultimately self-possessed we must know that, as Lennon/McCartney said in "I Am A Walrus", "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together." This means not only accepting our "oneness" but accepting that we are, for some interesting and not yet quite determined (at the level of critical mass) reason, living in a system of separateness, both of which are components of All. In essence, the stress of seeking to be completely involved is the stress of seeking to be completely uninvolved.
I consciously accept the stress under which I now live within the context of taking care of my mother as she traverses the path of The Ancient Ones, even when I handle the stress "badly", even when I make choices regarding what aspects of this stress I will accept and which I will reject. The curious aspect of what I am doing is that the more I accept the stress of my choices in living and loving the less stressed I feel.
I'm not saying that I don't have difficulties handling the stress of living and loving as I choose. What I'm saying is that, short of death, there is no way to avoid the stress of living and loving but to create another type of perhaps more easily handled and maybe less rewarding stress. Believe me, I make these choices many times a day, readjusting my choices as I observe their effects on my mother's life and my own. Sometimes my choices isolate me. Sometimes they usher me more fully into the "stress" of life. That's the bargain I struck when I said "yes" to life.
"It's easy..." Lennon and McCartney say in yet another song, "All You Need Is Love". Well, it depends on what you mean by easy but, certainly, it's life, and it's love, and it's dynamic and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else, doing anything else right now. This is the "best" kind of "stress" I can imagine at this time. Blame it on my faulty wiring and my inadequate ability to express myself.
Yes, I'll continue to use these online journal as therapy which will include accounts of being overwhelmed by the joys and the sorrows, the clarity and the confusion and the stress I've chosen. Yes, it is entirely possible that, as I continue others besides "Mermaid" will find my account disturbing, wonder why in the world I don't pass some of this "stress" off onto others and beleive that I need an escape. Let it be known, from this time forth, no matter how often I bemoan periods of exhaustion, no matter how often I wish, out loud, that I had a partner in this who is as equally involved as me, you must also take into consideration those posts in which I fully celebrate what I'm doing. Be assured, I really don't want an escape, even when I let off steam by howling that I wish for escape. This is life, my life, this is love, my love, and I have no regrets about chosing any of it. Looking back and forward I feel lucky that I've made the choices I have in regards to taking care of my mother. I'm pleased about all the choices I've made which led up to her asking me to live the final years of her life with her in total involvement. It may not be the wisest choice for others. This is the nature and mystery of the exultant separation of the One into the Many which we experience in this system of existence. It is the wisest choice for me.
