Dear Readers,
It occurs to me that a few months ago I promised you a chapter on the importance of sex. This was going to be that chapter. But when I sat down to write it, I realized I didn't know gosh-all about sex. I have just enjoyed it immensely and recommend it highly.
All that remains to be said on that subject is pretty obvious. If you're a caregiver, your patient is your long-established sex partner, and you're both willing and able, some fooling around is a distinct possibility! You can call it therapeutic sex, because you both can use a break!
Actually, isn't all sex therapeutic? I remember, as a young married, how I would fidget if I didn't get my share plus someone else's. There was such urgency. I was like a whiny little kid, waiting for Christmas morning, or for the neighborhood candy store to open. Or I was acting peevish because I wanted more and my wife sometimes said, “Let's not, and say we did!”
Oh, those were the days. Now I file sex under “Bygone Ecstasies.” (In this lifetime, anyway. There is always the afterlife, and I think I've mentioned I'm going to find her and pick up where we left off.)
Now, then. On to something I really know something about: attaining perfection.
First off, I haven't gotten close. But that's okay. To be perfectly frank, I heartily advise you to not work toward that seemingly praiseworthy goal. You will tick off everyone you know.
Mac Davis made that point quite amusingly and to music in 1980 when he topped the pop charts with his single, “Oh, Lord, It's Hard To Be Humble When You're Perfect In Every Way.” In a word, perfect people are invariably know-it-alls. If you attained that goal, yourself, you would soon look like a small space creature with a huge head to house your brain, and you would have a hit TV show and huge wealth, but no friends. We ordinary citizens don't want to be around such people.
So much for perfection. A perfectly bad idea.
Here's a better one: don't be so eager to serve your patient's needs that you leave your patient no opportunities to feel useful. For a long time, I made that mistake with my kid sister. Rawbaw finally let it all pour out. “Mike, please let me make my own breakfast, fold and put away my own clothes, and answer my own phone. Please don't do absolutely everything for me. I'm not that far gone!”
Holy moley. I had completely missed that she wanted to address her own needs as best she could. I felt like such a dunce. I had failed to see myself in her shoes. Had I done that, I would have quickly recognized that she longed to have a hand in running her own life! (It was a real “Duh, George!” moment for me, to say the least.)
Since I've had that jolting epiphany, we two have figured out a lot of stuff she can do for herself, her funky dawg, and me. Now she's a much happier camper, and I'm a much wiser camp director.
Yes, Rawbaw's in a wheelchair till we can get her back into “gait training” to master her prosthesis and regain her mobility. But even in a wheelchair, she now pitches in on many household chores. Sweeps the downstairs hallway's hardwood floors with a push broom. Tidies up various drawers. Scrubs the toidy in the downstairs john. Replaces dead light bulbs with live ones in lamps she can reach. Harps at me about the ones she can't until I handle them, myself. Reminds me of every televised Green Bay Packers football game throughout the NFL season. Closely instructs me on how much (and what kinds of) candy to get for Halloween. Keeps me hopping in other ways. And always reminds me to get a beard trim before I am mistaken for a street person (again).
I was going to say that she brushes the dog every day to keep the house from filling with dog hair, but that is currently just wishful thinking on my part. I suspect she is waiting for me to step forward and volunteer for that, while she continues as the dog's chief entertainer.
To Rawbaw's credit, she plays with Doggie Brooke a lot, which helps keep Doggie Brooke happy. Of course, Rawbaw gets mad when they play Brooke's idea of fetch, which we now call “One Fetch.” Rawbaw always says, “You little rat,” when Brooke won't bring the ball back. Recently, she's been referring to Brooke as “Rat Dog,” too, which sounds even worse.
Besides spoiling (and reviling) her funky dawg, Rawbaw has an important new interest. She has been a classical musician her entire adult life, playing viola around the U.S. and abroad, and now she is teaching herself piano and enjoying it immensely. She's whizzing through instruction books at great speed and already sounding quite proficient. Sometimes she's at the piano in her room at 2 a.m. As I pad by her open door on my way upstairs to sack out, she often asks, “Did Carnegie Hall call today?” She is having a ball, whether they call or not.
Obviously, her sense of humor is keen, and she is cracking jokes all the time. Her short-term memory loss causes her to repeat herself, but her best material bears repeating! Here are a few of my faves.
“Rat Dog, anytime you want to bite your Uncle Mike for teasing you, go for it.”
“Pick up your feet, Mr. Shuffles.”
“Into the kitchen, Slave.”
(Update: she has now promoted me to “Mr. Slave.”)
“Mike, you are the worst — and noisiest — card shuffler in the known universe.”
“Just for fun, let's tweeze that tufted hair hanging out of your ears.”
(She also watches for long, white hairs in my otherwise brown eyebrows.)
“Oh, my God. You're not REALLY going to go outside looking like THAT, are you?”
“Okay, Mr. Smarty-Pants, if I'm 'older than dirt,' what does that make YOU?”
“Why bother muting TV commercials if you always tell me what's being muted?” (She's got me there. Once an adman, always an adman, I guess. It's a curse.)
“If you keep eating your weight in cashews and string cheese, you'll soon be a cheesy nut.”
And so it goes at 1019 E.
I am in my sister's debt for being such a good sport.
Her wit transcends all of her adversities and makes this gig eminently doable, you know?
—Michael E. Hearons
