wonder in the everyday

Lately, I've been contemplating the meaning of truth....who gets to say it, claim it. What is Mom's truth....what is mine? It's been nearly five years since Mom's stroke, and we are still hanging on. Her to her life, as it is. And me to my life, what it has become.

This summer I gave a talk about women's caregiving at the place I work, Seattle University. It was a small audience, but I had invited people who have been with me on my journey caring for Mom. There were also strangers, people who wanted to hear about the balance we work to achieve, those of us who struggle with keeping hold of our own truth and those of the ones' we caretake. I spoke for fifteen minutes, and then read for ten minutes from my upcoming book--Lipstick Moons. I wasn't sure what to expect, either from me or from those who listened. When I finished, my voice was raw, full of emotion, though my listeners might not have known: it's been a while since I've spoken about Mom. But also there was my calm, a knowledge that said, "You have spoken the truth, Christine, and you have spoken well." And something else too, amidst the silence that gathered after my words no longer came: the grief, mine and Mom's, which had become something else over the course of my talk. While still grief, my experience, my emotion, was also now a connection, something shared with the women communing with me in Room 516 of the Casey Building. Most of us caretake someone, all of us know the grief of loss, at some point in our lives. And all of us struggle to work the balances in our lives. The tears leaking from the eyes of my listeners told me, "Yes, we have felt this too." I am not alone.

My thoughts for this talk were prompted by recently reviewing the care plan for my Mom who currently lives at an adult family home, a placement modification made due to the need to preserve her money in the face of the continuing strain on her finances. What struck me was the detailed level of care she is provided with. There was nothing in that plan I didn't already know. But somehow being confronted with the numbers of things was sobering: the 19 medications she receives each day, the 71 daily interventions (on all levels) required by her caregivers to keep Mom whole, or as whole as she can be, the 9 hospitalizations she has had since right before and after the stroke. It was overwhelming. And I thought: as difficult as I find my life--caring for Mom and trying to keep myself afloat professionally and personally--the women who care for Mom are administering to her daily, hourly and with unlimited love. They come from the Philippines and from Ethiopia, women from diaspora, looking for a better life, for a way to support their families back home, for work that is honorable and paid well enough that they can more than subsist. These women--Lina and Tess and Mulu--get up every three hours to change Mom's Depends, they pulverize her food and her medications so that she can drink them like milk, they talk with her even though now Mom can't talk back to them, they touch her, smooth her skin and smile into her eyes: in short they do everything I would do and more and not just because they are paid. The mundane details of Mom's life are looked after, even as I am looking after Mom's financial details and her health decisions and her emotional needs...and looking after my own details--the courses I need to get prepared for as my upcoming fall quarter approaches...the book I need to finish revising....the query letters I need to send out...the website I need to revise. All happening at once. Miraculously. Life is full of surprises, often not agreeable. But the women at Viewhaven are surprising and full of wonder (for me), women who help me help Mom. There are not words enough for this. Gratitude is my truth today.