Caregiving, Changing, Aging, Evolving
Around 30 years ago I read an article that said the average person in the workforce would have seven different jobs. If that’s still the case, I’d posit a more expansive theory: we should have as many “lives” as our experiences take us to and we should stop defining ourselves or others in terms of work, social media presence/visibility or some other harsh judgemental metric.
If I look at the professional experiences I’ve had during my own work life/career(s), I’ve been a print journalist, t.v. talk show host, sometime-newspaper photojournalist, attorney, author, poet, playwright, caregiver, mother and grandmother. I learned from all of those jobs and experiences. It’s what I am. We need to look at our own lives and our aging parents’ lives as an ever-expanding universe of wisdom. The most important question we should be exploring are: What does it mean to be human? Are we adding or subtracting from the universe? I am convinced that being a caregiver is a transformative experience and being the cared-for person is that too.
Just two examples: as an attorney for senior citizens who moved in with my mother, I suddenly found myself a caregiver with little in the way of thought or preparation despite my professional training. I had to learn as I went. Mom was a quiet heretofore solitary woman who had no hobbies as such except that she loved to travel because it brought out her thirst for experiencing new things. As her health and mobility changed, I saw an opportunity: I found a good frail elderly program that stimulated her mental faculties and got her out and about. The program tapped into her heretofore underdeveloped social side, and she responded to it even though she had developed dementia and (much to my amazement) she avidly participated in the program.
I continued to take her on cruises (I was a guest lecturer). When her ambulation became poor, that didn’t stop her zeal for cruising. If anything, it increased it because it was an activity that she still could engage in. I booked a handicapped room and off we went. It gave me joy that I could help her do what she liked doing best. That my biceps became a little bit larger from pushing the wheelchair. . . well, I welcomed that.
New parts of her personality emerged that I’d never seen before, and I don’t think it was necessarily because of her moderate dementia although that certainly contributed to it. If I hadn’t been shown a picture of my mother wearing a silly fright wig on Halloween at her senior program, I might not have believed it was my mother! Mom began making arts and crafts projects with enthusiasm, which was something she’d never done before. (The spoon holder she made for her granddaughter sits in a prominent place of honor in the kitchen several years after Mom’s death. Even though it is made of ceramic, my daughter considers it a family heirloom of sorts.
Another case In point—myself: I had to retire from my job when Covid hit because of my age and job duties: I represented clients who were in hospital psychiatric units and senior citizens in their homes and facilities. Forced to radically change my life, I turned back to two things I loved doing: writing, which I’ve done throughout my adult life and caregiving my grandchildren. I completed my second self-help humor book and my full-length poetry book, Why is Grandma Naked? was published in April and my poetry book, He is Walking Wider, has just been published.
Retiring enabled me to move in for five months of the pandemic with my daughter and son-in-law and serve as a parent stand-in to their then-two preschool children while they worked. I resumed my writing practice and returned to essay-writing, something I hadn’t done for a long while but which I always enjoyed doing. Three of those essays have recently appeared in mass-circulation publications.
Surprisingly, without my job-job, I felt a renewed zeal for life. I felt needed and fulfilled because I was using what I regard as my most prized attributes, my nurturing/caregiving abilities and my writing skills. I’m the happiest I’ve been in years. Being a caregiver to my grandchildren expanded my caregiving abilities and repertoire. It gave me new expertise and “cred,” if you will, and made me feel needed.
And that is my final contention: we all need to feel needed and valued. Whether being a member of a frail elderly group, contributing to a current events discussion or making a spoon holder for a grandchild (like my mother), everyone has something to bring to the table, so to speak. Does anyone know what the future may hold for ourselves? Do any of us know what we might accomplish? In my case, two years ago, I rewrote and produced a play
Just one example: I’d rewrote two plays I’d written over thirty years before and then presented one of them in a festival to several sold-out performances in a 100-person–I hadn’t had the belief in myself to undertake to do it then. The other play was performed in several festivals pre-Covid and on zoom during Covid. I also returned to journalism/essay-writing after a long time gap.
In short (or not so short): during my caregiving stint for my mother: both my mother and I evolved. When I was the parent stand-in to my grandchildren during Covid, our already close and loving relationship deepened even more and it evolved. While my mother is no longer here and my childcare duties have become far less time-intensive, I’ve turned to my writing if not full-time then for as much time as I want to devote to it. I regard it as a calling and sometimes it is a loud ceaseless calling. Soon, when the world opens up even more, at the top of my to-do projects is becoming a volunteer on a child cancer unit, which I did over 30 years ago before returning to the workforce full-time. It’s all a part of my evolution!