dad

Caregiving 101: Sometimes, you have to hit the ground lounging

Posted on by Kat

After nearly three months of going nonstop seven days a week while taking care of my father after he suffered two strokes, I found myself with three unscheduled hours in the middle of a day last week.

My first thought was a nap, but because it was early in the day, I wasn’t that tired. It was then that I took off my sneakers to relax and caught sight of my neglected, half-polished toes. It had been months since I had been to the salon. “I could go get a pedicure,” I thought.

The go-go-go side of my brain, trained from these long hours and many miles of being a caregiver (running two businesses, and trying to keep up with two houses and yards and multiple pets) said, “I don’t have time.” And then, I nearly burst into tears. “Seriously,” some small part of me said, “I don’t have time for myself? I don’t have time to take care of me?”

I knew then I HAD to go get that pedicure. I hadn’t read a book or magazine in many months. The winter had been hard on me. I got really sick in December and I had fallen on some ice in January, seriously injuring my back and a knee. Both required long recovery periods.

I needed some time to just sit and breathe and maybe do nothing while someone spoiled me with a sweet touch and added some beauty and color to my life.

I took a book I was excited to start and headed for a salon. The wait there was long and I walked out in frustration. I Googled another salon and found it was almost empty. The woman took me to a chair in the back where I put my feet in wonderful-smelling warm water and she turned on the massaging, vibrating chair. There wasn’t another soul back there; everyone else was up front getting manicures.

She said it would be about five minutes before someone got to me. It was more like 25. I read many pages in my book, my mind immersed in the glorious Kennedy years of the 60s before his assassination and far from medical procedures and various types of therapies. And for part of that time, I just sat and breathed with my eyes closed. And maybe sensing my need, the woman who did my pedicure quietly gave me an extra long foot and leg massage. I can’t describe how refreshing that was.

The next day, I hopped back on the hamster wheel of appointments with a different attitude, in beautiful sandals and with a spring in my step. I started thinking of ways I could get some breaks in each day, even small ones, just a little time for myself to refresh, renew and restore my exhausted spirit.

I thought back to a text conversation with a friend a few days earlier where he told me he was sitting outside for hours after work. I recalled my outdoor recliner, folded up on my porch collecting dust since fall. The weather had turned warm while I was constantly on the go – driving, running errands, taking my dad here and there, researching treatments and medications, interviewing specialists.

I got that chair out the first chance I had and sat in the sun for just 15 minutes, reclining with my feet up. I was revived for the rest of the day. I am finding time each day to do this now. And every time I see my chair, even when I don’t have time to sit it in right away, I smile. The same thing happens when I see my beautiful toes.

I was texting with the same friend one morning a few days later. The night before, when I told him how tired I was, he told me to get some sleep and then hit the ground running the next day. That morning, he asked what I was doing. I was sitting outside in my chair, watching my German Shepherd romp happily in the grass, and I told him so. And then I added, “So, you could say I am hitting the ground lounging.”

And that’s when the message really hit home. You have to care for you and love yourself every day, which I usually do, but it’s especially important, even crucial, when you’re caring for someone else.

I am tired today, but instead of running my dad around for his errands without a break, I took him to breakfast and we just sat and talked and breathed for a time. And then I took him to his house to rest before our afternoon appointments, and I am writing, one of the things I most love in my life. We’re both having the better day for it.

 

I wish you much peace and love today. And as always, if this resonates with you, please share it with your family and friends.

Life lesson: When coming across memories, focus on the good

Posted on by Kat

Have you ever had a memory sneak up on you and take you by surprise? Did you notice if it’s a sad or bad memory that you tend to soak in it?

But when a good memory catches you off guard, do you roll around in it as well? Do you revel in it, throw your head back and laugh, and recall how truly marvelous that moment was?

I was watching football with my dad the other day and when the defense ran off the field, the coach began that completely nonsensical ritual (to me, anyway) of patting each grown man on the butt as he went by.

As I wondered, probably for at least the 100th time why they do that, a memory dropped right into my mind, clear and bright and full of life, and I howled with laughter.

My dad looked at me like I was crazy. He didn’t see anything on the field that would warrant that response.

That was when I shared this memory with him, and before you knew it, we were telling other stories about my mom and we laughed so hard that tears were streaming down our faces.

When I was younger and I returned home from the Army, and patched up an old argument with my mom, we returned to our prior relationship but elevated it to another level, full of love and great times spent together. We became more like best friends or sisters, and we acted more like that than mothers and daughters typically behave together.

We held hands often when we went places. We hugged and kissed each other, and we gave each other great sometimes outrageous compliments. We got into our fair share of trouble, even getting thrown out of a few stores and other businesses for laughing too loudly or being a little rowdy while having extreme fun.

Well, we grew so close that when I decided to go to college and talked to her about it, I found out she had been thinking about going back to get that degree that she was working on but never finished when I was a teenager.

At that time, not as many people as now went to college “later” in life. It was a kind of daunting proposition, especially for her. But we decided we would go together and joked about how we would “graduate or die trying.”

We both made many friends and had a wonderful time at school. We were a little more studious and serious because we were both paying our own way and that seemed to make the classes and the time more valuable.

I had a beautiful male friend at school who would occasionally sneak up on me in a hallway and pinch me on the butt. He loved to see my shocked face when I first turned to see who it was and then we would just dissolve into laughter when I realized it was him. (Remember when you were young and carefree and did silly things like that?)

Well, one day my mom and I were walking down a hallway in the student union when I saw him standing in a line up ahead. She had never understood his pinching me, but her eyes lit up when I pointed him out and mischievously said, “Watch this.”

I walked right up behind him, grabbed one of his cheeks in my hand and gave it a good squeeze as payback for all those pinches. I don’t know if you can imagine how mortified I was when he turned around in shock and I saw something that shocked me even more: It wasn’t him!

I could hear my mom’s laughter echoing in that hallway as I stammered out some excuse and backed away, more embarrassed than I ever remembered being. I ran down the hallway with her at my heels and when we got a respectable distance from that young man, we laughed ourselves sick. I mean we were bent over, sobbing and squealing and having the best laugh ever.

This memory was what came to me in my dad’s living room during that typical Sunday football game. And the minute I got to the grabbing part in the retelling of it, my father just burst into laughter and heavy tears. We carried on about it for probably a half-hour and those two now-intertwined memories are now making me smile widely.

Today is my mom’s birthday, and although she is no longer with me (I have been a Motherless Daughter for nearly four years), I am remembering her fondly. I am choosing to go forward and focus on remembering more good times.

When you lose someone really close to you, especially where the love was deep and wide and profound, you tend at first to reflect on the bad things – things you wish you had or hadn’t said, or did, things that went wrong. But as time goes by, those things fade and what comes to you is much sweeter.

I encourage you to reach out for the good and revel in it.

Get to know your parents now, while there’s still time

Posted on by Kat

I bet if you asked 10 people, most of them would say they know their parents. But knowing them when you’re a child and when you’re an adult are radically different things.

I feel lucky to have learned this lesson, mostly before it was too late.

A few years before my mom died unexpectedly, I was watching a movie about the assassination of Bobby Kennedy and it occurred to me that she was a young woman during that time. So, during our weekly phone call, I asked her if she remembered it. She did and she had an amazing story to tell.

The next day, during my weekly phone call to my dad, I asked him the same question. He and my mom were not yet married at that time, and he also had a cool story to tell me.

All during the workweek, I kept thinking of something else I could ask each of them, and that started a weekly Q and A with my parents that lasted until my mom’s unexpected death three years ago. What I learned about them was awesome, and still is in the case of my dad, who I now live near and talk with almost every day.

Here are some of the questions I asked them, or things I suggested they tell me about, to give you an idea of how to get a conversation started:

  • What did you want to be when you grew up?
  • What were your best and worst days ever? (Interestingly, while my mom clearly remembered a beloved best day immediately, my father said he hoped it hadn’t yet happened to him.)
  • Where were you when John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were killed, and what do you remember about those times? What about when we landed on the moon? Where were you on 9/11? Do you remember the Challenger disaster?
  • Do you remember the first time you saw a movie and what was it?
  • Tell me about the first time you fell in love.
  • Tell me about when you met my mom/my dad.
  • Tell me about you when you were a child and teenager.
  • Do you remember your first favorite pair of shoes, and what were they?
  • Tell me about your first pet.
  • What was your first car?
  • Do you remember your first job? And what was your favorite job?

(Just for fun, after writing this column, I Googled “get to know your parents” and there were 19,100,000 results! Try that if you need more questions.)

Sometimes, stories can just pop up if you ask a question about a comment one of your parents makes. Yesterday, my dad said something was “rough as a cob.” Knowing he had grown up on a farm where they had an outhouse when he was a child, I asked him if he really had ever used a cob. The ensuing story was hilarious and we both laughed until we had tears in our eyes. I will never forget that story as long as I live.

(And so you know, yes, they did use cobs because they couldn’t afford store-bought toilet paper. But they used gloves to rub down the cobs first, so they were actually fairly smooth on the surface. “Hell, it was better than a page from the Sears & Roebuck catalog!” he said. “That slick paper wouldn’t do you much good.”)

The conversations I had with my mom before she died, and the ones I continue to have with my dad, have enriched my life and made me look at my parents in a whole new way. I have come to appreciate things that were hard for them, and to really enjoy some of the things they have loved.

Knowing them as they were throughout their lives, instead of who I thought they were based on the memories of a child, has been a huge blessing.

Memories are all we really have, when you think about it. There is nothing else that you can take with you. So, adults, why not pass on some of your memories to your children today? And to those of you who still have one or both of your parents, why not ask a few questions now to gather some of those memories? One of these days, it will be too late.

You never know who’s watching and learning from you

Posted on by Kat

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I was just at a CVS drug store with my 71-year-old dad, who asked me to come and help him do some shopping. He had a kind of long list and was going to use a credit card for the first time.

Now to those of us who have been using cards forever, that sounds like no big deal. But my dad has always been a cash-only kind of guy. He recently got the card, and he decided to try it out on this list of vitamins and medicine, which can get pricey really quick.

I hunted down the majority of the things he needed while he picked out one or two items. When we got to the register, I showed him how to slide the card through the machine. No luck there; it’s one of those newer chip cards. I could tell from the sigh he let out that he would’ve given up right then, when the message said, “Insert card below.”

But I then showed him how to put it into the reader and wait for it to approve the purchase. I then handed him the electronic “pen” and showed him where and how to sign. He paused after writing his first name and I knew what he was thinking.

“The signature won’t look just like yours,” I said gently, before he then continued to sign.

He put the pen back in the holder and I smiled and said, “See, that’s all there is to it.”

We headed for his car and I put his bags in the trunk. Before we left the lot, he asked me if I gotten an item we had put to the side because he wanted to pay cash for something. I headed back into the store to retrieve and pay for it.

An older woman was coming out of the store and said to me, “That was wonderful. I just told my grandkids to watch you, because I thought your patience was a beautiful thing to see.”

“I just love my dad,” I said, and thanked her for the compliment.

I grinned from ear to ear. I was just helping my dad do something he didn’t understand. But I made this woman’s day and taught her grandchildren a lesson in patience, she said.

That goes to show you never know who’s watching you and what they are learning from you. What are you teaching people today?