75. FREEDOM TO ROAM

Shuffle. Stop. Shuffling forward in Santa Fe’s Mail Office, six people in line ahead of me. FREEDOM TO ROAM. Three words. The Tee shirt’s slogan proclaimed across the stranger’s back. I caught my breath wondering if the man understood the gift it advertised. Time to contemplate before my turn. When did David and I last roam?

Suddenly sad, the realization hit me, David would roam only in his mind. And me? Would I ever again spin free this lifetime? Be free to roam? Be free? Joined at the hip, heart, my soul, these days I’m more tethered to his side tending to David’s needs than ever. Is total lockdown in our future as David becomes increasingly dependent?

These days I’m fumbling in the pitch-dark unable to see where I’m going, not knowing how I can ease his days while living mine.

How does the Shakespearean quote from Macbeth go? You know, the one of the witches recipe of a brew from hell but sprinkled with ingredients of our own.

Double, double toil and trouble heavy lifting, muscles screaming

Fire burn and caldron bubble daily tasks with sleep cut short,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble scrub, clean, feed and water

Double, double toil and trouble meditation interrupted

Fire burn and caldron bubble guarantee to sap endurance

Methinks it’s time for hospice home care. To fight no more. To give up exhaustive searches in the pointless effort to buy more time.

Accepting nature’s cycle means, not so much giving up, but allowing to happen what must happen to every vibrant being.

“Doesn’t mean you’re about to die,” the hospice workers and friends reassure, though you can tell their thinking from the expression in their voices, and about bloody time.

“You can be on hospice for years. Graduate, come off it and then go back on again later,” they encourage us.

Transferring David’s care to Home Hospice is big, but for sure a better choice than flying solo as we’ve been doing these past years.

I leapt at their offer happy to dump some of the load onto the backs of the kindly hospice workers. No longerdo I have to make every health decision on my own.

I pinch myself. Can it be true…we’re being offered help? Have trained aides to shower, shave, dress and breakfast him is just too wonderful a gift. And one hell of a relief.

If we needed proof we’d made the right decision, the enormous beam on David’s face when he first awoke to an angelic being dressed in blue bending over him clinched it.

“Wakey wakey. Rise and shine,” she cooed.

Scampering in and out through our front door hospice workers descend throughout the week on one-hour visits.

Flowers? What? you’ll bring flowers on Fridays too? We can’t believe we’re hearing right.

Ahh, bring David comfort mixed with a little joy…that’s big on the hospice agenda, and rightly so. It’s David who is the sufferer…oops the one living with the burden of Parkinson’s Disease. Political correctness be damned. Suffering Parkinson’s, is the homest truth of it. Better describes what I want to say. Better covers what the two of us are experiencing.

His physical and emotional wellbeing taken care of gives me precious spells of time to fill with what I will.

Imperfect human as I am, a pang of childish envy for all the attention showered on David grips me.

But what about me? I want a hug too. I want someone to comfort and cheer me.

Feel I’m about to cry. My rhinoceros hide is not as impenetrable as I make out, you see. I grab the few minutes of their visit to flop on my bed and allow my softie-self a tear or two.

Stepping outside the front door to fetch the mail this evening, I found myself crushing rose petals strewn along the path where they’d fallen.

A sign of Autumn, I smelled winter on its way.

THE PERFECT SERVANT-nope

…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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