Caregiving Story

I can't forget him, with his rosary beads and hugs and talks and tears. It was the best Christmas of my life with him and Colleen holding hands and making jokes at the dinner table. I can't remember feeling more needed and more loved by any two hearts in my life. You knew me. And sitting my your bed at night and listening to your fears I watched you go from big to small and then you were gone. I stood on the porch in slippers ankle deep in snow on Christmas Eve watching the tail lights turn around the last corner. When I came back into the house, warm with candle light and sick with body, I knew you weren't in that car, but still at your desk stringing prayers onto wire thread.

The same room where I used to see Marcel the Christmas before, and I knew a new body would occupy it soon. I got no sleep those nights, because you would come stumbling into the kitchen calling my name. "Krissie... Krissie... Krissie..." And eventually I would wake up, cramped up from the couch, and get you a doughnut, or make you hot chocolate, or find you some Morphine. And then we'd stand together on the porch and smoke, and I would shiver and you would fall asleep leaning against the rail with the red burning down to your fingers on the cig. And then you would ask for another. I wanted to say no, but I couldn't, because I knew between doughnuts and hot chocolate and Sunday visits from your Momma the cigarettes were your only solace. And every time, it never failed, I had to remind you to untangle the tubes around your face and leave them in the house so you didn't burn the whole place down. I remember having one arm around your shoulder and one arm clutching a pillow, looking up at the Christmas lights on the rails of all the porches of the apartment complex across the street, and truly not wanting to be anywhere else in the world. I wish I could have said the same for you. I was shocked at how quickly you turned into a scarecrow. You were my friend.

I have a new woman with needs. She doesn't speak English and the language barrier is almost more than I can handle. "you no understand?" No... I don't understand. The key to her apartment is hanging on my key chain and I want to slip it into the pocket of an Indian woman who knows how to communicate with an 80 year old Buddhist with arthritic feet and no commode in the living room. No commode... a hamburger meat tray. I love her still because she's from Calcutta and the only thing I said that locked our eyes in understanding was Mother Teresa's name. "Good woman" she says. Yes, good woman.