Straight Paths: I Bet You Thought You Were a Better Person Than That

I Bet You Thought You Were a

Better Person Than That

Loren Hardin

The Ashland Beacon

            This is part five of a series about Carolyn who enrolled in outpatient hospice services with Parkinson's disease. Carolyn and her husband, Charlie, could have survived and thrived in Alaska, "The Last Frontier". Charlie stated, "I married one tough cookie. She is tougher than a pine knot." But Charlie is a pretty tough hombre himself. He reflected, "When we were kids, we would have fist fights just to see who could win. And in my previous life, I wasn’t a troublemaker, but I would oblige anyone, the best I could, if they came looking for it. I came home many a time with my nose as flat as a saucer. I had two surgeries on my nose and Dr. White held up his fist and said, ‘You’ve had too many of these stops at the end of your nose’." Carolyn interjected, "That’s because he put his nose in too many places where it didn’t belong". Then Carolyn grinned, as they say down south, “Like a possum eating a sweet potato”. 

            But no matter how tough we seem, we all have human limitations, don’t we? That’s why the Medicare Hospice Benefit provides five nights of inpatient "respite care" every month to give the caregivers a well-deserved and much needed break. Charlie admitted, "Before I agreed to use a respite the first time I was done for; I was done, I was ready for the fork. There’s no way I could have taken care of Momma at home this long if it wasn’t for the respites."

             But even with the monthly respites, the wear and tear of eight years of progressively demanding caregiving is taking a physical toll on Charlie. Charlie admitted, "I don’t know how much longer I can take care of Momma at home, but I’ll do the best I can by her for as long as I can." What makes it even more challenging is that Charlie has a plethora of medical problems of his own; kidney disease, a pacemaker, his ankle needs fused, both knees have been replaced, and he was told he desperately needs back surgery. But he told the orthopedic surgeon, ‘There’s not going to be any surgery doc, who will take care of Momma?’

             Caregiving and chronic illness can exact an emotional and social toll. Charlie admitted, "We’ve grumbled more at each other over the past two years than we have during the first forty-seven years of our marriage. We never had a cross word until about two years ago. I get really impatient with Momma, and I say things I shouldn’t say; and I feel terrible afterwards."

             I suggested to Charlie, "I bet you thought you were a better person than that didn’t you?” After allowing Charlie a few seconds to ponder, I suggested, “We’ll you’re not. Join the crowd. You’re just a human being like the rest of us.” I explained to Charlie that I came to this same harsh conclusion about myself when I ‘lost it’, multiple times, while helping my mother-in-law and wife care for my father-in-law. I explained that I learned to say, “I’m sorry” and “God help me!” 

             I shared a story with Charlie, about another hospice patient, Ralph, and his wife Anna. One day Anna suggested, “You know, you can learn a lot through illness and taking care of someone”. I asked Anna, ‘So what have you learned?” Anna answered, “I’ve learned to look at Ralph as a human being first and a husband second, because you expect more from a husband than you do a human being.” I suggested to Charlie that, “Sometimes we expect more from ourselves than we do a human being.” 

             Oswald Chambers wrote about “The Initiative Against Despair”: “The disciples went to sleep when they should have stayed awake, and when they realized what they had done it produced despair. The sense of the irreparable is apt to make us despair, and we say, ‘It is all up now, it is no use trying any more’. If we imagine that this kind of despair is exceptional, we are mistaken, it is a very ordinary human experience. Whenever we realize that we have not done that which we had a magnificent opportunity of doing, then we are apt to sink into despair; and Jesus Christ comes and says, ‘…that opportunity is lost forever, you cannot alter it but arise and go to the next thing’. Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ and go on into the irresistible future with Him… Never let the sense of failure corrupt your new action,” (My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers). 

     Loren Hardin was a social worker with SOMC-Hospice for twenty-nine years. He can be reached at 740.357.6091 or at lorenhardin53@gmail.com. You can order Loren's book, "Straight Paths: Insights for living from those who have finished the course", at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.