How and why caregivers order their days around another’s needs
Evelyn stood and walked out of our adult Bible fellowship meeting Sunday morning about 15 minutes before it was finished.
I had already accompanied her to the bathroom once during the hour, but I wasn’t sure she’d get there again on her own, so I left to help her. I found her just standing in the hallway outside the door.
“Hey, Honey,” I said, “Where are you going?”
“Well, I thought I would go here,” she answered, as if my question didn’t make any sense.
I decided not to lead her back to interrupt the group again. “Are you ready to go home?” She nodded yes, and we walked down the short hallway to the parking lot, alone.
Not the day I would have chosen
She spent most of the afternoon resting on the couch. It was a very quiet Father’s Day, except for a welcome video chat with my kids late in the afternoon. After supper, she agreed to sit with me on the deck where she read from a stack of magazines I gave her, quietly but out loud. I relaxed at some distance so I could enjoy the weekend newspaper mostly undistracted.
She went inside on her own, where I found her engrossed in another magazine and reading again out loud, which continued for more than another hour. I decided not to try TV till she stopped, electing instead to handle some correspondence and blog planning from my laptop at the kitchen table. I was pretty tired by the time she was ready to watch TV, sometime after 9:00.
None of this was what I would have planned if given the choice.
All of it is another example of the daily dance any caregiver must make between wanting, planning, and adapting. The caregiver’s duty is a life of perpetual accommodation.
My version of everyone’s story
No big deal, right? After all, accommodation characterizes every healthy life.
The business owner adapts to meet his customer’s needs, and the valued employee puts the boss’s goals first.
The husband and wife notice what their partner wants or needs and often put aside their own preferences for the sake of their spouse.
Watch any parent of a busy preschooler and notice how much of the day centers around the child’s needs. Then see how parents of grade-schoolers yield to their kids when choosing vacation spots and especially restaurants. (I remember road trips when only McDonald’s Happy Meals would satisfy, and then my relief when the kids hated to go there anymore.)
We have a friend who doesn’t like cheese, so we don’t serve spaghetti when he comes for dinner. Another doesn’t want fruit in his salad, so we forget the strawberries-and-spinach recipe.
But this is different . . .
So, if accommodation is healthy and normal, why does it feel like a burden to the caregiver? Two reasons, I‘ve decided.
For the caregiver, the accommodation is almost all one-sided.
In typical adult relationships, each party adapts for the sake of the other.
• The good boss sacrifices profits for employee benefits, and happy employees are more likely to better serve their customers.
• Sooner or later, the child learns to give the parents what pleases them. (Admittedly, for some, it’s quite a bit later!)
• Healthy marriages are give-and-take.
• And no one stays friends forever with someone who never asks, “How are YOU doing?”
As we left the building Sunday, Evelyn said, “I’m sorry.” No problem, I told her, a little surprised and a little pleased that she still has some occasional awareness of how her preferences impose on mine.
But more often she doesn’t notice when I’m cleaning up messes she made, scurrying in the kitchen while she rests in the living room, or deciding when I can work outside by when she’ll be asleep or a friend will be here to keep tabs on her.
It's OK, really. I’m at peace with this chapter’s demands. But they’re not easy. The second difference underscores why.
For the caregiver, the accommodation is constant.
• Anyone pursuing work-life balance eventually finds some time for herself.
• Each partner in a healthy marriage enjoys hobbies or friends that don’t involve the other.
• Exhausted parents of preschoolers enjoy some small respite in an easy chair at the end of the day.
• Empty nesters try to keep quiet about how nice it is to have all the teenage hubbub out of the house.
• And we eat what we want when we’re not considering our guests’ diets.
But I’m never off task as a caregiver. I’m constantly considering when I’ll need to adapt or react to whatever Evelyn will do or need. Even when a helper is here to give me time away, I keep my cell phone close in case of an emergency or a question. And I know many thousands of others experience the same.
. . . and it’s still OK
All of this tires me out, but I’m rarely depressed by it, partly because I know others regularly accommodate me.
• My bosses endured my mistakes.
• My kids tolerated my idiosyncrasies and preferences. (Still do, in fact.)
• My buddies keep spending time with me, even though I talk too much and procrastinate on tasks they would have accomplished yesterday.
• And my wife—I won’t tell you all she’s put up with from me, all the ways she bent her life to accommodate mine, all she has forgiven.
Remembering forgiveness reminds me of God, the ultimate accommodator. Paul the apostle (also called Saul), the educated and zealous Jew who persecuted Christians until he became one, knew about God’s accommodation. “While we were still sinners,” he wrote, “Christ died for us.”
When I think about how my brokenness contrasts with God’s perfection, I’m overwhelmed by all he has accommodated in me. And his patience and provision strengthen me to keep accommodating the person in my care. I know he loves her even more than I do.