She’d been caring for her father for a long and difficult lung cancer battle.  He passed away on Friday.

This has left her with feelings of anger, huge sorrow and a big hold in her heart.  And she’s exhausted from all the hard, tender loving care of being a care giver. 

Care giver fatigue comes from many places…your head pounds because it’s stuffed with so much information.  Appointments, treatment options, household duties, comfort concerns and the list just grows and grows. 

The heart is pounding too.  It’s beating for the both of you, in many ways.  Worry, love, stress, the up and down emotions tied to the changes cancer brings on a daily basis.   

The mind makes promises the body can’t keep.  You can’t keep up with the hours and hours of staying awake at night after your loved one has finally fallen asleep.  You need rest too….but there must be something more you can do to change the course of the disease, if you just stay up a few minutes more, it’ll come to you….that one thing that will make it all go away.

But, for many of us, that “one thing” wasn’t to be and the anger and the hurt and heart ache of the loss takes over.  That’s where my friend is now and it’s a hard place to be.

Hard work…Heart work…that’s a care giver’s life.