Hello Readers,
Please keep in mind that my posts these days are more of rants – venting and emotional dumping. The “You” referred to in this post if not any specific person, but rather the energies that I have been working in the process. Now that the issue is resolved, I am free to post my thoughts from days past. I hope that if you are ever in a similar situation you can learn from my experience.
~ Julie
You may look on at my actions and wonder when I will just sit to read a book, or just be in the room with him. To watch, you see me hovering with pills to be given, or clean clothes to put on. And you wonder why – I don’t just sit as you do.
From my point of view, there are the tasks of “caregiving” that I have committed to providing. I hear you saying bring in the nurse to be “the bad guy.” I really do hear what you are saying. Giving the pills, the morphine, the change of clothes is more than just a “task” that a nurse performs. It is the pills that reduce the brain swelling, lower the blood pressure, calm the body, and minimize the pain. It is LOVE. That is what I am sitting by waiting to give.
“Why haven’t I been sitting and only that (as you do)?” Just the other day he asked about the “tone” being off. Everybody is doing things that they wouldn’t normally do. It felt wrong to him, and I guess it feels wrong to me too. My life has changed, but I have yet to change with it. That will come later, I suppose.
I never was one to just sit. That is how he and I are different. This difference has had it’s role all these years. I keep busy – taking the kids to and fro, being at their activities (games, parties, etc), communicating with the teachers, coaches, daycare, and then working and running. I’ve never been able to keep up with it all, but I’ve done my best.
There were many times when pizza was ordered, or the clutter and dog hair left lying around beside the piles of clean (but unfolded) laundry. But that was normal and I had a familiar rhythm in that. Now, as I watch you pick up YaYa at practice, go to BoBo’s baseball games, or even do the shopping, I feel like my life, my rhythm, is dying with him. I cannot say enough how much I love You ALL for all of the love and support. I know that I cannot do this without you. I just want to feel like I have control.
I found your notes for the nurse to be brought in. This is his and my decision. I found them, yes, and I hid them from you. Sorry, but I am saying NO. I am not ready to have a stranger in my house being “the bad guy” to the man that I love. He doesn’t need a “bad guy”, he needs a “caregiver.” And I need to be that for him and for ME.