Abigail Thomas has a beautiful piece this week about the difficulties she encounters caring for her husband, who suffered traumatic brain injury after being hit by a car. She cannot care for him herself. He has severe mental impairment but is still able to physically move about, which means he can wander off on his own. He must be watched constantly. It is a hard duty:
In the beginning, a home health aide was there 24 hours a day, and together we tried to get Rich to his doctors’ appointments, his outpatient rehab, into clean clothes, into his shoes, out for a walk in the park. Simple tasks were uphill sledding. What would take an ordinary person five minutes took Rich hours, and we learned to start preparing him long ahead of time, but he fell into rages and we often got nowhere. There were three shifts, and everybody went home after eight hours except me and Rich. We were home.
She has to put him in a nursing home, with all of the attendant anxieties:
How do I live with myself? What kind of woman am I that I can leave my husband in this place? What about my wedding vows? Who am I that keeping hold of my own life is more important than taking care of my husband? But I can’t take care of him. The truth is that no single person, no two people could take care of a man in Rich’s condition.
She agonizes over her obligation. How much is enough? - a question I pondered myself a couple of weeks ago reflecting on my duty to my aunt. Let me repeat here a few lines from that earlier post:
In the end, I find myself returning to Zhuang Zi, who tells me that if I act unselfishly I will ultimately recognize the limits of what is possible: " if you forget about yourself and always do what circumstances require of you Then you do what you can, and whatever happens is fine."
We must care for our loved ones but, in doing so, we must also accept what we cannot do. Maybe that is enough.
She is certainly doing enough. She has found a way to provide him with the care that he needs; she maintains her personal, human connections with him by bringing him home for short visits. She has adapted to the very difficult circumstances in a loving and effective manner.
But still she will fret. She is performing her love for him in very tangible ways but, because of that love, she will always be uncertain if it is enough. All we can do is say: yes, it is.
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