Caretaker conversation

Who is this person whose life dramas have become the script of my life?

I've been listening to a lot about this in the last few days: the maddening perplexities of caregiving. I don't mean what's provided by the professionals who go on and off clock, though God knows what they do is difficult enough. I'm thinking about family members in interminable situations who do care (because they do love), but don't want to (because it's toxic); who can't care (because they're exasperated) but must (who else?).

The cared-for experience many of the same terrible feelings of impotence, being imposed on and imposing. They are not in an enviable position (though caretakers may sometimes wish they were given even a fraction of the solicitude were directed to the cared-for).  Still it is their condition and its developments that fundamentally set the agenda for the care-givers. There is plenty of room for tender affection and gratitude flowing both ways, but also for resentment, rage, self-reproach, sorrow, exhaustion, despair.

Can't leave, can't stay. Only death or recovery (or some kind of professionalization) offer any prospects of resolution, and even these are fraught.

Some encounters in everyone's life are like this. Occasion after occasion is a new test of one's willingness to be involved or withdrawn. Our awareness of this is part of what keeps us smarting whatever we do

The big issues of justice and injustice, right and wrong are difficult for any framework for the meaning of life to address, but caretaker situations are as challenging not just because these ethical categories are only incidentally relevant, but because these situations, by their persistence and pervasiveness, don't just shape our life experiences, but use up the very hours, days, months, years of our term of life. If not our lives directly, then the lives of those who are near us, and there are sure to be many such.

Such experiences can sometimes be redemptive, and perhaps in the long term, after reflection, often are, but not always.  What I keep coming back to is the possibility that each such encounter has a place in the complex interaction of God-in-love and the beloved Other. It may be that giving and receiving care is implicit in the back-and-forth flow of that passionate relationship. It may be that whatever desirings we have, any deeds we do, of friendship, hospitality and exploration in any occasion, have real lastingness--whatever we, in travail, may do the next.

I feel impertinent talking about any of this, but I need some ways of managing my thoughts about this when I listen, as I do, to caregivers opening their hearts. I remember the God-in-love prayer: you are present whenever I or any open to your potentiality, energy, power.

It think that my wife and I are terrified of having each other as caregiver. Perhaps this is why I wrestle with this matter.