When I became a caregiver for my mother, I wasn’t even familiar with the term caregiver. I plunged into this role with no plan, no preparation, and no training. Since then, I have learned that caregivers “are people who provide unpaid care by assisting an ill, frail, or disabled family member or friend with activities of daily living”. The definition makes it sound so clean and tidy and noble. Ha! Before I tell the story of my experiences with caregiving, I’d love to hear yours. Chances are that you have been, are now, or will become a caregiver. We read the statistics. But, statistics don’t tell us what it’s like to have that day in and day out responsibility. Tell us what it’s like. What is your experience? How is your life affected by your role as caregiver? How do you feel about these responsibilities?
Quote of the Week
A wise woman adapts herself to circumstances as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it.
~ Chinese Proverb
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This is a discussion site for women 60 and older. You are invited to help shape the stories in my upcoming book.
I try to post a new question for discussion every Monday and look forward to your comments.
Women & Aging 
I would like to say that I was not a care giver for my mother, although I loved her dearly. I was 600 miles away, and my sister was living with her, so she gave the needed care I was not even present to witness. I have, however witnessed the needs and responses in a situation close to home. A friend’s parents made the move we all seem to be at least contemplating …one that took them close to their daughter. The father, a long time alcoholic, died almost immediately. The mother almost followed equally immediately, but, thanks to the daughter’s devotion, pulled through and is alive today at the age of 90 something. The important thing here is that the daughter was, initially, so fearful that her own life would be obliterated. I can remember her saying, understandably defensively, ” I have worked really hard at building a life for myself, and….” Anyway, it has been my total joy to see that the daughter has not had to sacrifice ” the life she built up for herself.” On the contrary, despite the fact that she has selflessly given her time, energy, etc., on innumerable occasions, she and “that life” are Increasing in Wisdom and Stature. Amen!
It almost comes as a surprise to me today that I have been my husband’s caregiver in one way or another for eleven years as he survived a number of health setbacks and crises. I am reading Gail Sheehy’s “Passages in Caregiving” and can identify with much of it…the different stages from “shock and mobilization, the new normal, the new new normal, etc.” The supportive nature of our community of friends and the beauty of our surroundings have made both the patient and the caregiver aspects more bearable than they might have been, but now that we are in the “4th Quarter” of the life game, I realize we will need more help from family. We are blessed that serendipity has given us the means to have the best of both worlds. We are going to divide our time between two homes…one (in Kansas) is very close to children and grandchildren. We will be a family circle..everyone sharing responsibilities, plus (and most important) we will be strengthened by being together physically and emotionally. We will also (at least for the meantime) be able to enjoy time with our circle of friends in Arkansas who have been here for us all along the way. We are blessed.
I am also a care giver for my mother. I find it very difficult. My mother has been living with us for about
fourteen years.
My mother is 95 years old and we live with her and her dementia and physical limitations.
I do not find care giving gratifying. I struggle to
find positive conversations to have with my mother during the day and I make some peaceful time everyday to renew my spirit and ask God to help me be a good care giver.
Care Giving for a parent is an experience, I never planned for and I am learning on the job.
Six months after we married, I was diagnosed w esophageal cancer. My new husband now became my caregiver. He could have said, “This isn’t what I bargained for” and just walked away. But he didn’t. He is my hero for sticking by his commitment w/out a single word of complaint, ever.
With this kind of cancer, caregiving meant daily trips to Sammons Cancer Center for radiation, followed by a full day’s work, only to come home to an empty table and the person you love propped over a sink, wretching their insides out. Caregiving meant shaving my head for me, running to a distant compounding pharmacy for special drugs that Walmart couldn’t supply, installing cables and wires so I could have a television near the bed for those times when I wasn’t wretching, or coughing, or begging to die.
Two years later, when life for me had become something worth living again, I had the honor of being my husband’s caregiver. He was wearing a flipflops in the backyard (an absolute Ozark no no), when he slipped on a stone and broke his ankle in four places. His recovery would take six months, half of that in the bed or in the recliner.
I became his cook, his housekeeper, his nurse. I fixed him the most nutritious meals of local, organic food, bathed him daily, washed his hair for him, treated his blistered, burned leg (a reaction to the post surgical use of betadyne) and most likely emasculated him completely because he is a very independent, stoical man who doesn’t gracefully accepts someone else washing his ass for him .
I found caring for him to be deeply gratifying. I was working off an debt. And I loved almost every minute of it. The only times I was frustrated was when he became depressed over his immobility and loss of independence.
Today he’s back out on the golf course, playing a very good game. In fact, he so well healed, that we just came off an overseas trip where he had to climb over a thousand steps.
My story has a happy ending for both of us. But the silver lining doesn’t cover the big cloud overhead. The cloud that represents the day one of us becomes the caregiver while the other makes the final trip. I don’t look forward to that day.
I married at age 17 to a young farmer. A couple of months after our marriage, his appendix ruptured. He very nearly died. He never got his health back. Later, he developed an ulcer which bled, causing him to have surgery. Two thirds of his stomach was removed during a surgery wherein he had to have 16 units of blood. A few years later, the scar tissue which had developed at the junction of stomach and intestine had nearly closed the opening off. More surgery. He did a lot of custom spraying and between the chemicals and a bad drinking problem, he developed cirrhosis of the liver. All of this time, I was his caregiver. He was alcoholic, but still a good man, ethical in all his dealings and honest, a loving father and husband. He spent long periods of time unable to leave his bed. He developed diabetes and was insulin dependent. I read labels, watched his diet, gave him his insulin injections, took him to his doctors appointments. It sounds like a thankless job, doesn’t it. But it wasn’t. We grew closer through his illness. Of course there were times when I was exhausted and discouraged. There were times when I wished for just one afternoon with no cares, one chance to do my shopping without worrying about him. We made it, though, and I was right beside him when he died, at age 56. I loved taking care of him. I loved finding little ways to make him smile. He so rarely complained, even though he was often in terrible pain. He was my best friend, my lover, my husband and my other half. Although I deeply regretted that his health was so bad, I have never regretted the time I spent caring for him. Simply put, I loved him.