A Care giver’s bag…
When cancer gets tough, caregivers get tougher.
It’s our time to dig deep into our tool bags and find that smile we had saved for this kind of day. Remember those assuring words we knew we’d need at some point in this journey? They are in that bag too; somewhere in a zippered pouch waiting for just the time to use them.
The magic foot rub: when all the stress that cancer creates is reaching overload; got to find that soothing, scented lotion that brings deep, relaxing breaths. It’s in there somewhere.
A washcloth to rinse away days in a hospital bed or old photographs of better times with family and friends to make the cancer go away for a while.
A care giver’s bag is not to be shared; one size does not fit all. On the contrary, each care giver is unique, their tools are honed with their patient in mind.
A care giver’s bag is made with love.
January 21, 2016 @ 10:17 pm
Afterwards I threw away the old,frayed black bag. When I bought it-she laughed at me and my sixty dollar “man-purse”.Regardless,we did not know the requirements of the journeys or the depth of the simple practical intimacies that lied ahead.”You got about a year” and for about a year the over-sized satchel was always within reach.Its contents consisted of everything from emergency barf bags to nail clippers.Puzzle books,crackers-the ever present canned soup and can openner packed away hoping the infusion nurse would have access to an available microwave oven. The mail from three days prior was usually stuffed in a side pocket and the inside sleeve served as tabernacle for essential telephone numbers and extra house keys-only to be released to saintly neighbors and trusted friends and family.The illusion that we still had something to protect helped us muddle through.For a few years after I kept the ever present, organized stacks of “EOB”s. I realize now that I really didn’t need to sojourn with itemized Estimations Of (dwindling) Benefits.She didn’t pay much attention to such details-she knew I would be all right and she was not going to be all that rubish. She did not end as cancer.She was not cancer and she would not allow me or anyone else to identify her as the frail wife of the awkward,loaded down spouse.She was never cancer-loaded down.