That feeling when there’s a nip in the air, the year is headed for a close. Laden with gingerbread and plum cakes, one begins to count the ways in which they are grateful and send thanks into the world for all the “normal”
Stop press. Hold the plum cake. Sitch incoming.
I am primary caregiver for my parents, fractious relationships and fraying emotions notwithstanding. A fortnight ago, my father, who has been mobility constrained for a year, fell and broke a femur bone. Surgery & associated scenarios happened in quick order. A quick shout out to the exceptional Sparsh Hospital, who made a difficult situation easy. From the time I got into the ambulance with Dad, he was well taken care of. The surgery went swimmingly, the doctors anticipated our questions and answered them in a way that was all empathy. Updates were swift & transparent. Care was professional. We might have been one in a thousand cases they encounter, but they didn’t let us feel it. Thanks to that, I could focus on caregiving and nothing else. Up next, the long long uphill recovery route.
Now, I’ve given care for various family members in hospitals half a dozen times since I was 20. It hadn’t before told on me or adversely impacted work commitments. I would just pick up and carry on. Alas, no longer a spring chicken. I am beginning to feel mortality knocking or is that just my knees? Maybe peri-menopause? Is there a difference? This peri-peri is letting me know on a daily basis, who is boss. In that landscape, to balance the demands of my business and give care for parents has been, to put it mildly, hard.
The next big one, for a nuclear family that has never had live-in help, was the omnipresent attender. Without him we’d be sunk. Still, getting used to another presence, one with a completely different socio-cultural OS is crazy! A crash-course in adapting for everyone involved – with majority of the responsibility on the parents, thanks to their experience and age. One can’t expect empathy from a 21 year old, new to the city, studying and finding work where they can.
I find myself assessing socio-culturally appropriate message delivery methods and when to lean on someone’s male privilege, to pass on “developmental feedback” to a 21-year-old. To recognise that this moment doesn’t warrant assertiveness or feminist beliefs has built emotional range. At its core, it uses situational awareness, keeping an eye on the end goal (patient comfort) and safety all around.
Ready or not, in rolled the next: My parents 50th wedding anniversary coincided with the day dad had to head back to the hospital to get the stitches removed. To switch from caregiver to party-bringer wasn’t the hard part. I had the brainwave to turn the celebration on its head. I hate the “Everyone, send wishes to my parents” house of pain, coordination and begging. So my MO was, “I’ll dress up the parents, prettify the house and make them send wishes and blessings and gratitude to the world.” Success. The parents got all the love, minus any of the begging from me. Amid multitudes of cakes & floral arrangements, I left the parents happy that night, beaming at their Whatsapp. The dratted thing finally came in handy as the conduit of love from family, neighbours and friends. Hm.
To do all this while being cheerful, being on point at work, catching up with goings-on with others, keeping an eye out for the well-being of my tribe has been well-nigh impossible. I am realising, as I write this, it supposed to be impossible. It is human to pick up one or two big areas of focus, and let all else fall by the wayside. No guilt attached. Anything more is not about that situation or those people. It’s about something inside me not computing and me overcompensating.
I noticed that there is an unsaid expectation from people broadly on my side, that I continue to present per usual to them. My past behaviour is the biggest culprit here. I am deeply high-functioning, which is some kind of extended trauma response to, “If I don’t serve others, I won’t be loved, then, where will I be?”. This time, that pattern enraged me. Unless I tell people, repeatedly and consistently, that I am not available to keep engagements I had earlier agreed to / my time is not anymore available for the next quarter, for work or non work interactions, why should they get it? They’ve known me for years to be able to juggle parental caregiving, work, social events and more and somehow being able to find time for myself.
And so, this is me acknowledging that the speed at which I turnaround things takes energy. That I don’t owe that speed and all-pervasive, always-present energy to anyone except myself. That I need to replenish my life force and that needs very little external help. I see this as a sign of fresh boundaries coming up. I am learning to be happy for it.
There is also the this recurring theme of how the daughters are exceptional at giving care. I resent that — mostly because I recognise how gender conditioned that “above and beyond” response is. Would most guys I know clean their parents house, buy them clothes and organise a celebration for an occasion amid an ongoing medical event? No. Is that decision wise and self-preserving? Yes. Do I want to get there too? Heck to the yes!!!! Would I still want to mark the occasion and be present? Sure, thats MVP for me. I wouldn’t put a 16-hour deployment in the middle of everything else. The funny thing: I had come to this conclusion but couldn’t stop myself from going ahead, all the same. Is that love or compassion or just who I am? Ought I to continue to be that person? Maybe that is to be figured out in the coming year(s). This exploration too, I take as a sign of me placing my needs at the centre of my own mind.
At the start of journeys, we don’t know where we might go. This was supposed to be about giving care to another, but it has also been about intense self-care. Not of the spa and scented candles variety but of the “question my long-held beliefs, identities, insecurities and re-establish norms” variety. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Or so I have to keep telling myself.
Not everything is figured out — a perpetually aching back, for instance — but that is what the coming days are for.
Monica Pillai 