I was moved by the recent Chapelboro feature about Piedmont Health and the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly. Known as PACE, the organization’s full name is illustrative: its goal is to afford seniors the ability to live independently by helping them with various needs. As the interview beautifully articulates, PACE is interdisciplinary, comprehensive, and empowering. They provide life-giving care not only for the clients but also for their families.
Over the years, I have known several families who used the services of PACE. The program also provides peace of mind to loved ones, allowing them time to care for their other dependents, like young children, as well as for themselves. What a gift. Caregiver fatigue is real, though often hard to admit because people rightly understand their caregiving as an act of love, not merely a duty. Caregiving is about sacrifice, devotion, and dedication. And caregiving is also about guilt, grief, and physical and emotional exhaustion. And, and there is a deep, deep abiding joy.
When I consider caregivers, I think about how close the words “scared” and “sacred” are to each other. It’s not just a matter of the order of two letters. Scared and sacred: there’s something profound there, right? How do the things that thrill us also terrify us? How are the experiences we most enjoy simultaneously the ones we fear will end? How do we sense that how to love is also how to lose? How did Mary Oliver say we are to live in this world?
You must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it.
And when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
We are scared in these sacred moments, and caregivers know it’s the littlest things that come to light. A smile, a wink, a ride to the doctor, a sunset, a hug, a home delivery of an extra oxygen tube to replace the one the cat has chewed again—damn, wasn’t that the third tube this summer? We laugh and wipe the tears from our eyes and pull that rascal feline into our lap, loving each other still.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of the book with Wipf and Stock Publishers titled This Is the Day: A Year of Observing Unofficial Holidays about Ampersands, Bobbleheads, Buttons, Cousins, Hairball Awareness, Humbugs, Serendipity, Star Wars, Teenagers, Tenderness, Walking to School, Yo-Yos, and More. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where he is a student of joy.
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