‘Be the husband.’ What did I think that advice really means?
One bit of advice stuck with me as I was deciding whether to move Evelyn to a care facility.
“You need to be the husband,” one of her physical therapists told me. “When caregiving takes all your time and energy, replacing your role as Evelyn’s husband, it’s time to make a change. She’s losing everything else. She can’t lose her husband.”
“Be the husband” echoed through my memory in the weeks after I heard it.
When I was on my hands and knees helping Evelyn in the bathroom.
When I was mopping up spills or changing sheets.
When I trimmed toenails or combed her hair.
When I searched all over the house for her shoes five minutes after we should have left.
When I awoke with a start in the middle of the night and found her sitting up on the living room sofa, slumped over and asleep.
When I gave up watching a TV show we had picked because she couldn’t sit still to enjoy it.
When I followed her around the house, trying to prevent a fall.
None of this qualified for what I would put in the “husband” category. No, it was all caregiving, and it wore me out—if not physically, then emotionally.
Free, but not really
So now I’ve delegated the caregiving to others and I’m free to “be the husband.” But I’m still trying to figure out what that means.
For one thing, I haven’t given up caregiving. Here’s what I do when I visit Evelyn.
I help her finish her lunch or dinner.
I walk with her through the halls of her new home, holding her hand or keeping a gentle grip on her arm or shoulder to guide and stabilize.
If I decide to let her try using her walker, I watch every second to keep her from running into another resident or getting stuck in a corner or lifting and carrying it.
I sit with her in activities—until she stands up in the middle of them and stumbles on the footrest of a neighbor’s wheelchair.
I hand her a magazine and watch as she reads aloud, for 30 or 60 minutes at a stretch, while I go to my phone for a game or the latest news.
I chat with nurses and aides. I show interest in their lives and their problems, but always, always I’m watching to gauge what kind of care they’re providing for Evelyn when I’m gone.
When they’re busy, I help Evelyn in the bathroom, which occasionally frustrates me more than I want to admit.
I’m not sure what I thought would happen when I was free to “be the husband.”
What was I thinking?
Would we have long talks about important matters? That hadn’t been possible for years; a change of location wouldn’t suddenly give her the capacity to empathize and evaluate.
Would we enjoy fun activities together? Only to the extent that I could prevent her from falling, make sure we took along a change of briefs, and be prepared to abort when her energy was spent or her interest had vanished.
For several minutes on Mother’s Day, I could “be the husband” as we enjoyed a special Mother’s Day Tea offered at Artis where Evelyn is living. I brought a dress and a necklace from home for the occasion. I enjoyed it more than she did, but all the food was wonderful, and everything except the petit fours was prepared in-house.
I’m taking her to the doctor this week, and if she seems to have the energy, we’ll go through the drive-through at The Cone on the way back. That’ll be easier than parking and walking to the pick-up window. For a snippet of the day, I’ll try to feel as though I’m the husband, the companion she needs, enjoying the companionship I remember.
But I know now it will be more like companionship with a 3-year-old, except that a 3-year-old could tell me what she had for lunch or what happened yesterday in the activity room. A 3-year-old would decide for herself which flavor to choose instead of depending on me to suggest one.
‘Have a wife’?
I’ve decided I was thinking all wrong about this notion of being the husband. Somehow I said the words and unwittingly wanted “be the husband” to equal “have a wife.” But at this stage, anything I do or plan for Evelyn is all and only about her, not me. She has little capacity to contribute anything to our relationship.
And so, when I’m with her, and most of the time when I’m away, I’m thinking about her safety and satisfaction and security. My role is to see that she’s served and protected. It’s all about her.
What can I give?
And it dawns on me that maybe that’s what “be the husband” should have meant to me, first and most, for all 50 years of our marriage.
Centuries ago, the apostle Paul told husbands to love their wives exactly as Christ loved the church. Christ “gave himself up for her,” Paul explained, and concluded, “Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.”
How could I have ignored or forgotten or misunderstood this definition of “be the husband”? It was never supposed to be any more about what I could get than what I should give. And now the curse of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s has morphed into a blessing to help me see that.
Finally, I have the chance to “be the husband” in ways I never anticipated on a journey that’s teaching me what the words really mean.