One aspect of relationships many of us take for granted is space. We develop loving and affectionate relationships with friends and family without thinking about the space and void that is necessary for keeping those relationships whole and sane. As much as we may love someone, it is often the absence of one another and the time spent apart which makes that relationship possible.
Friendships in elementary and high school seem so special because you find someone you can spend most of your day with. Perhaps a small detail, you find someone you can spend your ‘forced time at school’ together with, bonding and learning about one another, creating memories. Once you transition from high school to the next stage of your life, it is often difficult to maintain those relationships. Sometimes its because you develop new friends, go on to new adventures and life pulls you apart. I believe it is also because you cannot maintain that delicate balance of equilibrium that was fundamental to the relationship. High school friends who move on to University together, move in together, or spend too much time together, often have their relationship tested.
In my own life I found the maximum amount of time with my best friend was about a week. After one week, no matter how well we got along, I needed a day fully away from him, and he needed the same distance from me. We really learned about this while traveling together. Despite the incredible adventures we had, we still needed that full day of not seeing each others faces or we were going to get into a fight.
Distance and space are crucial elements that are often forgotten because they are invisible. Take them away and you change the dynamic, no matter how strong or positive it initially was.
This comes to mind most strongly now as I stay with my grandmother and do what I can to help care for her. Necessity and emergency often bring a family together. My grandmother is 90, almost 91, and her failing health had all of us deeply concerned, even more so because of Covid and the situations in hospitals. She came home at the end of December and for most of the time since, I’ve been trying to help my family by being an extra pair of hands and feet for her. It has been very difficult. It has been very trying.
I am amazed by how many of my friends and family have gone through something similar; caring for an older parent or grandparent. Old age, sickness and death will enter all our households one day, and we all have to find ways of dealing with it as it approaches different people in our lives. One thing everyone I have talked to has in common is that the experience often changed them, changed their relationships, and took a huge toll on them. You may want to be caring, fostering and to be there for a loved one, but it does come at a steep cost, whether that be in time, energy, money, or most importantly, in stress and mental well being.
At times I have done my best to try and remain positive and optimistic. That ability to look on the bright side of things has become weaker and less frequent as time has gone by. At first I was doing my absolute best to be as attentive and careful as possible. Someone’s life was hanging in the balance and I was incredibly afraid that I might make a mistake or miss something that would be life threatening. As in all things, as you become used to a situation, and as my grandmothers health returned and she was no longer in a critical state, you start to become acclimated and numb to things.
I can feel my emotions and feelings being slowly leeched away, whittled down, day by day, as stress and problems add up. I thought I was prepared for this. Mentally I thought about this very situation, about the needs of caring for someone and the possible toll it would take. But knowing that is no real preparation. In one of the most insightful books I have ever read, Alphonse Daudet talks about his slow degradation and death at the hands of syphilis. In “In the Land of Pain” he talks about how pain is only ever new for the sufferer, and that for everyone else around, they become tired, annoyed and irritated by it. How critical that idea is. For someone suffering, crying out in pain, the moment is new, excruciating, totally devoid of banality each and every time. For someone hearing those same cries in the next room, it becomes taxing, annoying, something you wish would just stop.
This applies to not only physical pain, but also mental torment. Someone who is mentally unwell lives in that moment vividly each time, their paranoia and fears gripping them intensely. For someone watching from the outside, the descent into fear and anger and vile disgust only brings out our own feelings of disgust. Empathy is one of the first casualties.
Again, this goes back to time and frequency. I can watch other family members come and visit, see the limited interaction as something nicely contained, a few moment that highlight something good in that relationship, endearing smiles, heartwarming well wishes, all the nice elements we hold onto in relationships that are nicely tucked away in our memories. For so many of us, I think that is what our grandparents are, living or deceased bundles of fond memories, small snippets from holidays or family events where everyone is happily fathered around a large feast. For the longest time that was my real relationship with my grandparents, the good memories of times when I was always just a guest, watching a small segment of my family on their best behaviour.
And so now, as I catch myself complaining, feeling my patience burning out, and finding more anger and resentment creeping into my everyday thoughts, I try to keep part of myself separated. I try to remember that I’m doing something good for someone else, but it is definitely not easy. Spend enough time with someone and you will see all the different facets of them laid bare. The good and the bad. You will see the parts of them that they hide deep in the dark recesses when they are alone, the parts that reflect poorly on them.
I try to remind myself that I am doing this for my own reasons. So that years from now, I can look back on my own choices and be proud that I did all that I could to help when my family needed it. But that feels more and more hollow as times goes on. All of this seems to be gnawing away, slowly, day by day, at my notions of family and my memories. The lack of time apart, of distance, is slowing stripping away the relationship I once had, however good or bad, with my grandmother, and replacing it with something far less compassionate and far less patient.
Obviously I am writing this to get the thoughts and negativity off my chest. But I’m also reading it for anyone else who is struggling to take care of a family member, now or in the future. There are no easy solutions. I hope your situation is a positive one. I hope your time with them is a blessing that you can appreciate. But from my friends who I’ve talked to, that often isn’t the case. Whether its physical sickness, or mental health issues, these things are rarely good. Life has a way of forcing itself onto us, whether we are ready or not.
Early on my grandmother said these words in a state close to death, not quite lucid or fully conscious. While she lay gasping for air, she said to my cousin and me, “La morte è brutta”. Death is ugly. Whether it is something tragic and sudden, or something prolonged, it often is ugly, and it also shows us the ugly side of life.