38. IF ONLY CAREGIVING WAS ALWAYS…

Stepping from the airport shuttle at Albuquerque Sunport’s curbside, the desk clerk summoned a wheelchair and checked in the two of us, overstuffed bags and all. Right there. No fuss no lines. No dragging cases to the Check-in desk inside. As he took each bag, weighed and placed them on the moving belt I felt the caregiver’s mantle round me flutter then let slip. Pouffe…bags and mantle vanished from my sight. Just like that.

“You’ll next see your suitcases in Geneva,” he smiled handing me our boarding passes.

L-I-B-E-R-A-T-I-O-N.

Unburdened, I stood a moment and allowed myself to stretch.

“Ah, this is how it is to be a regular person again,” I sighed looking round the hall of milling passengers.

I’d forgotten how glorious was the feeling of walking free. I swung my lime-green Bagini for the sheer joy of not having David’s dead weight clinging to my arm.

Like our bags, David and his wheelchair disappeared from sight through Security and out. I trotted to catch up. Half-heartedly, I confess. My own person, at my own pace I paused at a gift shop not because I wanted to buy any of their stuff but because my hands were duty-free to finger the fridge magnets depicting what tourists to New Mexico are expected to like: a Roadrunner, a sun Zia symbol, a string of chile-peppers, a Jackalope, and the ubiquitous howling coyote in a cowboy neckscarf.

From there on, the journey unrolled like the Indian bedding roll I’d traveled with as a child. Waiting at the gate to board, I could almost smell the spice of curries cooking, hear the chai-wallah calling, see the groups of Indian families bedded on the station platform beside us, my mother, brother and me, waiting as we waited for the blackened steam engine to manifest from the dark. Yes, travel was romantic then. Adventurous too.

“We’ll begin with pre-board,” the announcement landed me back in Albuquerque.

Safely and comfortably settled, at last the plane lifted us into the vacuum of the unknown. No routine to follow, no appointments to keep, no phones to answer, this was the life.

From the aisle window I watched Salt Lake spread low and flat like buttered bread below the peaks and ridges of the Wasatch mountains.

“We’re on holiday, my sweetie-pie. We’re going to have a lovely time,” I patted David’s hand, my mind and body sighing their agreement and relief. David turned his head to me, nodded, munched a cookie then slept. An hour flashed and the flight was over.

Airport assistance = wheelchair. I call them airport angels. Always happy, smiling full of chat the chair-pushers magically appear to meet the plane, and whisk David to the connecting gate.

For once it’s not me who humps David’s heavy frame. Not me who steadies his balance. Not me who carries his bags. I’m once again his companion. Once more his wife. That’s what I mean when I say I wish caregiving were always as easy.

For the weeks before travel I squirrel away a stash of fives, tens, and one dollar bills to parcel out in grateful thank-yous. Sort of like dealing cards.

With time enough to do all he needed in order to avoid a trip to the plane’s toilet cubicle during the nine-hour flight to Amsterdam, we exited the Family restroom relieved. The travel-tip I have to offer anyone traveling with a mobility-compromised and incontinent companion is dress in layers: I’m speaking undergarments beneath trousers. Three pairs to be precise. Cut and rejoin the sides of the two inner pairs with duct-tape. Peel off the tape for easy removal without undressing and…“Ta-dah….Voilà…” with a yank and sleight of hand as fast as a magician’s, a dry pair lays next to skin. No struggle needed to remove shoes and pants. No fear of embarrassing leaks.

Airport-angel jumped the line of waiting passengers and in a minute strapped us comfortably in the airbus bound for Amsterdam.

The airhostess taking over my caregiving duties, fussed and tended David, ensured his legs were elevated, his head cradled by a pillow, and a drink within reach. Redundant and needed only as an overseer of David’s care I ordered a Scotch. David did likewise. I watched him while he ate his fish course, then dig his spoon into a cream slathered chocolate dessert, and order a port.

“Bodes well,” I thought to myself foreseeing five weeks of family holiday ahead and slept blissfully for four hours straight. Morning broke, the lights flipped on. Breakfast appeared and was cleared, away, and with just one bump we were back on earth.

One connecting flight remained. David was pretty well done for. But thanks to our Airport-angel we even made a bathroom stop. Whacked out and jet-lagged the last hop to Geneva passed in a daze. Deplaning David turned into a two-man job…first plane seat into the aisle wheelchair, from aisle chair to a regular sized one for the speed ride through immigration and customs.

All at once we were expelled into Arrivals with our feet firm on French soil.

Oh, the joyful hugs and kisses of welcome as the family gathered round and loaded David, bags et moi into the car for the forty minute ride to their farmhouse.

So here I am in the mountains breathing in the soft air, and gazing at the jagged peaks of the French Alps rising from our bedroom window. Here I am where the burdens of caregiving break manageable, scatter like the red roofs of Mont Saxonnex’s tiny village. I stepped back. The family took over.

“Let me help, Grandpa. This leg David. Move this one. Bend your knee. Hold here. Now push. Up. Well done.”

I suppose this is the way aging and elder care used to be. Family stepping in, keeping Grandma, grandpa with them at home. David. Me. And they have offered. My daughter-in-law and son.

“The ground floor apartment is yours whenever you say the word.” Mean it too. No question of being stuffed away in some institution. Discarded. Branded useless just because we’re OLD. Makes me, us, feel safe just knowing.

Small is Beautiful, wrote Schumacher. The village in Spain’s Picos de Europa where we summered for eleven years was living proof. I remember the elderly…Angel, the blind man with his stick perchedall day long on the village wall. “Hola. Hola Senor Angel,” the villagers greeted as they passed him by. Then there was Antonia, mother of Juan the owner of the Bar Juanon, incontinent and disorientated from Alzheimer’s who was treated respectfully by any villager encountering her and gently escorted home. Same went for Mario, an autistic and developmentally delayed young man obsessed with a length of string before his eyes. No question of shutting him away, he spent his life at his mother’s side. I remember watching him standing at the field’s edge in the corn, content swinging his string while she scythed.

“Have you thought of putting David in a home?” people in the States are always asking.

You mean like a dog? screams my mind and felling my heart against my rib bones.

“If I were him,” people persist giving me what I call the look, “I’d have chosen to GO a long time since.”

Was the insinuation I should do away with David? Be rid of my husband? Or. He should do away with himself?

I cower under the implication of their words.

“We still have many good times.” Ignoring the look, their disbelief, I say. Remembering, remembering all we have, all the precious moments we share, so precious we neither of us are ready to let the other go.

Here our first night in France cozied soft in the warmth of body heat, we lie together, our pinkies curled, joining us, as we wait for sleep.

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Please LIKE me if you do, and re-blog my piece. I look forward to your comments.

Next week’s blog: Hmm? Not sure yet.

Previous blogs:

1.Wearing a Hat from Hell * 2.Back Story before the Tidal Wave. * 3.There’s a Mouse in the Room. * 4.Shape-shifting — Husband to Patient:Wife to Caregiver. * 5.Think your Home is your Castle? Think again. * 6.Vision Quest beyond the Box. * 7. Cats in the Belfry. * 8.“En Guard Messieurs”…Dare me: cross this Line. * 9.Like it or No — Prepare to Play God. * 10.’Tis the Season to be Jolly — not for me it isn’t. * 11.Hello. Hello? Anyone Home? * 12.The Blue Hole — 90 miles ahead. * 13.Disabled — Daft — Demented? * 14.Up. Up and Away…* 15.Humble Pie. * 16.What do I have to Complain About. * 17. Come Back Tooth Fairy. * 18. Promises Promises. * 19. Fly Fly Away. * 20. Refresh. Reboot. * 21. Can this be Happening * 22. Hate when David… * 23. What if…? * 24. Hanuman and I have a Birthday.* 25. Happy and Glorious.* 26. High Time. * 27. * Change?…As good as a Rest. * 28. It’s a Long Way… * 29. Missing Something? * 30. Are we there yet? 31.* To voice or not to voice — I’m talking feelings here. 32.* Metamorphisis…grub to?*33. Roller Coaster. * 34. Testing. Testing. * 35. A Bird’s Eye View.* 36. Crossroads. *37. Madam your slip is showing.*

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THE PERFECT SERVANT-nope

Written by

…perfect I can never be. WEARING A HAT FROM HELL, my husband’s caregiver, just 80, I am tired. My husband has Parkinson’s. He is tired too. www.galisteoliz.com

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