Talking to myself in a room that feels empty. This is my story
Sometimes someone says something that changes your whole perspective. Or resonates with your situation. Or simply helps you carry on. This week I want to share three such statements—one old, one new, and one from just last week.
The three are unrelated. Their truth is self-evident without commentary, and I don’t need a whole post to explain how I’m thinking about any one of them. So I’m combining them in this entry because I want to remember their potential to lighten my caregiving load. And maybe at least one of them will help some other caregivers too.
I found this quote scribbled with some other notes I took from a lecture my friend Roy Lawson gave during one of the cruise trips we hosted together. The folded sheet was stashed away where I’d forgotten it. Did God know I would need to hear his advice this year much more than several years ago when Roy delivered his talk?
Roy Lawson, lecturing on a river cruise ship, November 2018.
Maybe. It reminds me that a positive outlook is not about putting on a happy face or denying the bad or ignoring the negative. None of that will endure. But I can remain positive when I daily recap the blessings accompanying my troubles. Looking at the big picture, the bright moments that pierce the shadows, contributes to balance. And no one can do this for me better than I can do it for myself.
I’ve tried to walk a tightrope in this blog: noting the sad decline I’m seeing weekly, but not wringing my hands in woe. Sharing the encouragement and strength I’m receiving from friends and neighbors and God himself, without slipping into a Pollyanna dismissal of reality.
I can’t keep that balance by staying on one side of the teeter-totter. Life right now is hard, but it’s also very good. It’s a fact I most remember when I repeat it to myself.
My friend John Samples made the statement at that lunch I described in last week’s post. He just celebrated his 90th birthday. His wife of 72 years passed away about a year ago.
I’ve never heard a more concise description of the widow or widower’s grief. The comforting companionship of the person sitting quietly nearby or busy with work in the next room was always an unspoken reminder of the experiences and values and plans you shared. But now that sharing is over.
And it’s over for me, too.
“Does Evelyn ever initiate a conversation?” an overnight guest in our home asked me last week. I hadn’t stopped to realize that my answer to that question must be no. Well, almost.
Occasionally she will begin a sentence telling me about an event that may or may not have happened or a task she thinks she wants to do and has no idea she can’t. But almost never—never—can she complete her sentence.
Occasionally she will begin a sentence.
If I can discern any fragment of what she’s trying to say, I make some response. “Well, that was hard, wasn’t it?” “It feels good to get something like that done, doesn’t it?” “We’ll have to see if we can make that happen.” I have no idea what I’m talking about, but she usually responds as if she thinks I do.
It’s like talking to a toddler who knows only a few words. But ask any young mother how she feels being home all day with a toddler, and she’ll eventually admit it’s lonely.
So it is for my friend, John. And so it often is for me.
I had called ahead to the office where we’d get our annual eye exams, mentioning Evelyn’s disease and explaining that she might not be able to answer all the doctor’s questions. “Oh, your appointments follow one after the other,” the receptionist told me, “so you can be together in the same room for both of them.”
We posed with our friend Martha Brammer during a visit to The Christian Village at Mason several weeks ago, and Evelyn easily demontrated that sweet smile.
The kind technician examining our eyes was gentle with every request. Evelyn responded warmly, and I think the technician was surprised to see her pleasant demeanor. “She has such a sweet smile,” she said more than once. Maybe she didn’t know what to expect from an Alzheimer’s patient.
I’m never sure what to expect, either. But most mornings that sweet smile greets me when I go to wake her. It comes again as she’s getting dressed. And if I joke with her, often (but, alas, not always) the smile will become a chuckle.
I love that smile. I look for it every day. It’s an important part of our “big picture,” the whole story I try to tell myself again and again and again.