Caring ... because I do actually care

Image of the day: a courtyard under the wines in the Barossa Valley. Why this image?
Because of the peace and tranquility of it ... and the good memories associated with the day I took it.

I've been a carer (or "care giver," as our American cousins say) for a very long time, and I've done the job full time for around twelve years now. Sometimes it seems longer. Other times it seems like just yesterday I was a kid myself, and the frail aged mother for whom I'm now caring was young and vital. But as you go on and on as a carer, and the person for whom you're caring grows ever older and more feeble, the old memories -- the good ones -- begin to fade.

Even now I'm doing the job; I do it to the best of my ability, and I do it every day. I'll do it to The End, however long it takes, because ... well, she's my mother. But I've come to nurse one fear.

The end of this particular trail can't be very far away now, because too much is physically wrong with Mom for there to be a lot of time left. The caring has become a full time job which has overflowed from occupying all my time and brainpower, and is now making deep inroads on Dave's and Mike's time too. Between the three of us we're coping, and we have  great family GP who's as supportive as a family GP can possibly be.

My fear? Simply this: that by the time we reach the end of the trail, the good old memories of Mom as she used to be, in another world -- or is it another dimension? -- known as "The Past" will have been buried so thoroughly under the ocean of more recent memories of pain, mess, exhaustion, that they'll become inaccessible. Lost.

Sometimes when I sit down to meditate I try to open the gateway to the past. It's supposed to be stored in indelible memory and redundant detail, somewhere in this biological miracle, the specific human brain belonging to me.  But I can't seem to find the keys to the gateway. It's closed to me now, and I'd dearly love to be able to jimmy it open.

Strange thoughts to be thrashing out in a blog post, I know; but I have to wonder how many carers are in the same situation.

What I wouldn't give for a Tardis right now!

So Dave and I grabbed a couple of hours while Mike was available to sit with her, and went for a walk among the McLaren Vale vineyards. I'd wanted to "walk a country lane," and Dave made it happen for me. Wonderful.