Helpless
Feeling unsettled – helpless – someone crying silently in my heart – these days I must keep disciplined focus on the tasks at hand. Teaching private sessions in the back patio or on zoom, getting absorbed in cutting back eager ivy, and weeding out an innocent looking, not easily noticeable but explosive invader plant. Talking to my good friend Bernd in Berlin for an hour and half, his wife is Russian, her mother does not believe there is a terrible war in Ukraine. I take to cooking different congees, with rice, barley… This is one of those times in my life when food needs to be very simple. Playing my cello is the best medicine.
After months of silence, a friend texts me out of the blue, she needs to find help caring for her ailing elder husband. She remembers me having Araly when caring for my husband Bob, once a week for 4 hours for the last few months of his life. Araly tells me stories about the many hair-raising and ridiculous situations she has been encountering throughout her career as professional caregiver. We laugh a lot, she is my savior. After Bob's death, I decide to devote myself to professional caregiving. But instinctively I know that I now need first perspective and take care of myself, so that I will not drown. And I am right. Today, six years later, I give advice to my friend who is not sure about anything in her shifting reality at home, the uncertain decline of her husband. Death could come in the next few months, or it could be years. Listening, I clearly feel her overwhelm, confusion, concerns about money, boundaries, what is real, what is imagined. I was there myself. I make several calls to find a helper, then speak again to her. Each time when we are on the phone, her husband knocks at the door needing something. A smoothie might be good for him, he suggests, the old banana tasted awful. I hear his voice fragile, his soft yet all consuming need, the lostness. “He sounds like Bob,” I observe. She is surprised and intrigued as I continue: “Listen to his voice, beyond the words, and you will know where his spirit is at. You know how to do that.”
So much is hiding in our voices, in plain sight, beneath the words, within the jumble of vowels and consonants, the tones, the music. What wants to be heard? I remember how good it feels, when giving care, we are needed. Besides mourning the loss of Bob, I terribly missed the routines, challenges, and fulfillment of caregiving. Especially in the face of death of loved one, feeling needed, feeling helpful, is a real gift. It brings solace to giver and recipient. In war times so much is needed, in Ukraine everyone steps up, does something to help. Together. We do something in order to defend against helplessness. This is what makes us most human. We hunger for it. Here too, in America, so much is needed. Today, I am a tiny bit of help.
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