I am lit*er*al*ly NOT a caregiver
Truth Serum Tell #3
This was originally published behind a paywall, but I’ve decided that all TST posts will be made public.
It was March 2020
Older Sis and I had been living together for 2 years by then. She was still going into the office, but by the second week, I was required to work from home.
And I wasn’t mad about it.
On a random Tuesday, Older Sis had felt compelled to check in on our parents and I’m glad she did.
“We need to go see Mom’n’Dad. Get ready. I’m picking you up,” she’d said in a quiet, urgent tone.
“Wait, what? Why? What’s going on?” I’d asked in a panic.
“I was talking to Dad and he sounded disoriented. He didn’t know what day it was and thought it was 5pm,” she’d said.
It wasn’t. It was 10am.
“I’m calling 9-1-1 to have them go check and I’ll have TK run over there.”
The paramedics did show up, but my parents didn’t answer the door because they weren’t expecting anyone. Typical Stranger Danger tactics.
They both ended up testing positive for COVID, so we decided to quarantine with them.
Dad got worse.
He didn’t really have an appetite.
It was a fight to keep him hydrated.
And all he wanted to do was sleep.
It took a phone call from his bestie—who had already been in the hospital for 5 days!—to convince him to go to the hospital. Side note: his stay was much longer than my Dad’s because he ended up on a ventilator for weeks.
When we dropped him off at the hospital three days later on a Friday night—at a makeshift triage tent in the fucking hospital parking lot!—we weren’t allowed to go with him.
Happy 77th Birthday, Dad!
Our only communication with him was via cell phone.
We had to call the hospital daily to get updates to find out when he was coming home.
“We don’t know” became a phrase I would hear in my sleep. And grow to hate.
We had to advocate for him to:
Get extra blankets (why are hospitals SO. FUCKING. COLD?)
A longer bed because he’s so tall (why don’t hospitals don’t make beds for 6 ft tall people?)
To wake him the fuck up when they brought his food so he could eat a hot meal. For fuck’s sake.
Those 10 days he was in the hospital were the longest 10 days of our lives.
Welcome to Lit*er*al*ly, Ororo, a weekly blog by me, Ororo Munroe. You are reading Truth Serum Tells, posts about deeper life. No needles or toxic, mind-bending drugs were used to write these posts. Thanks for reading.
The time away from her husband seemed to exacerbate my mom’s short term memory loss. They’ve been married for 50+ years and have never spent more than a day or two apart.
They do everything together.
I think not being able to see or talk to the love of her life on a daily basis was killing her.
It was definitely killing me because it was a glaring reinforcement of why I never wanted kids:
I am not a caregiver.
When my Dad finally came home, it was sans his plaid shirt, shoes (they just put those scrubby-shoe paper things over his socks), and his medical card.
Needless to say, the administrator at Good Sam got a heated letter from the Munroe family. If he’d come home like that in the dead of winter, heads would. Have. ROLLED.
10 days turned into 20 because he had to quarantine for an additional two weeks.
I was still working remotely.
And by then, Older Sis had been furloughed.
Merriam-Webster defines a caretaker as:
one that gives physical or emotional care and support
I can honestly say that my caretaking abilities were at about 10% compared to Older Sis’s 90%. Maybe because she herself is a mother?
I relied on her. Heavily.
She did most of the cooking because I hate to cook (I take after my Mom in that aspect) and she loves it.
She asked all the good questions when we checked in with hospital personnel.
She provided regular updates to family and close friends of our parents.
She coordinated a grocery run with the neighbor across the street, a car club member, and a Lions Club member, and a meds pickup with her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend.
I worked.
I acted as gopher, fetching this and that.
I probably helped chop up veggies or something.
I worried. A lot.
I had an internal breakdown.
I shed a lot of hair and made a vow to shave it all off the moment we were allowed out of prison (strikethrough) to leave our homes.
Older Sis and I were able to go back home by mid-to-late April.
I was so glad to sleep in my own bed—alone (Older Sis and I had to share a queen bed)—that I wanted to stay there. For, like…ever.
We checked on them via phone for a week before going back to see them in person.
And I didn’t want to go.
I didn’t want to stay overnight.
I didn’t want to go back and be reminded that I could’ve lost my Dad.
I didn’t want to be reminded I spoke sharp words of impatience to my Mom.
I didn’t want to be reminded that after logging off work for the day, I couldn’t just hop back in bed and open the Kindle app on my iPad and just…decompress.
I didn’t want to be reminded that I COULDN’T VOLUNTARILY LEAVE THE HOUSE. FOR NEARLY A MONTH.
I didn’t want to be reminded of the guilt I carried for not “holding my weight”, even though my parents thanked us repeatedly for being there with them.
I didn’t want to go back to a house that should’ve been deeply disinfected (Or saged). With buckets of bleach. While wearing Hazmat suits.
***
When I think back on it now--The COVID Experience--I believe that I more than likely was experiencing PTSD. Not in the traditional sense, but a mild form. To the point where a previous enjoyable activity like visiting my parents had become something I dreaded. For a few months.
I’m still amazed that Older Sis and I didn’t get sick before, during, or after.
I’m also starting to believe that maybe I’m not a caretaker in the “typical” sense, in the way that Merriam-Webster defines it.
Maybe caretaking manifests in different ways for me.
Still trying to figure out what that looks like.
Since I once again find myself sleeping in this queen bed.
Alone most days.
But still sharing.
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