Posted in Blessings & Thanks on December 10th, 2010
Tags: caregiving, christmas time

Sometimes the best Christmas present is the most unexpected gift you can think of.

Family Caregivers are protectors of the weak and vulnerable.

Caregivers must be kind, and caring, yet be very strong in mind and spirit.

With all that we do, and must take on as the Family Caregiver, we can become very tired, sometimes beyond exhaustion and find ourselves living in a world of the irrational and the unfathomable.

Adversity can break the spirit or it can make the spirit grow stronger. When we are placed in a realm of adversity, it can allow us to see and value life from another perspective, even if our perspective comes from a place of mildly crazy.

Since my husband, Barry, had his stroke in April 2000, which left him physically and mentally disabled and confined to a wheelchair, I have had to cope with 18 hour days, managing the business and spending the rest of the day caring for Barry. Caring for Barry is more about fighting for Barry’s life, which constantly wavered between life and death by having to pull his soul back towards the living every time he would falter. For over ten years now, I have had to deal with death sitting just around the corner, calling out for Barry’s soul.

I have always wondered if this hardship of caring for Barry and dealing with his fragile health is karma for something I did in a previous life time. I believe that what harm you do to another person will come back and bite you on the ass. If karma does not get you in this life time, then karma will find you in another life time. With Barry losing his life to kidney disease, I know my karmic relationship with Barry will soon end. They say everyone will experience death, and after Barry’s passing, I hope that I may one day experience life again before my passing. Right now, death and hardship is teaching me to be strong when I cannot change course in my journey and to not take on other people’s issues and egos  seeking to control and manipulation ”life and lives” for the power of lies.

 

Zippy Lou

A few weeks ago, we were hit with a nasty snow storm that was the coldest winter I had ever experienced while living on the Pacific coast. At that time, Zippy Lou, our petite “princess” Maltese-terrier became distracted with the areas of the house where the hot water pipes would run between the walls and back under the house. Zippy would give her bossy woof and point with her fuzzy face. We have rats .

The more Zippy snooped around, the more I could see she was getting the heebie-jeebies. Zippy, who always wants her blankets and clothes to be clean (she has a wardrobe any diva-bitch would love) and even asks to have her face washed and to be combed every morning, was starting to become overly anxious. Zippy Lou is looking up at the walls and cupboards making sure the rats were not hanging from the ceilings ready to jump on us.

Zippy’s breed, the terrier, was raised to hunt rats and have witnessed her hunt down a rat in the garden one summer. Her instinct took over so quickly that when she looked down at the dearly departed rat, you could see she was in shock and felt horrible for what she had done. I had to give Zippy a tablespoon of red wine to calm her down. Zippy is a very emotional, sensitive little girl even though she is a dog, as I have seen her break down crying, balling her little eyes out and wailing on the top of her lungs like a small child because the neighbor’s cat had passed away. I have to pick her up like a small child to comfort her while she snuggles her head on my chest and blubbers away.

So now here is Zippy, upset with the stinky rats living under the house, and now expects me to carry her around until the rats go away. I gave Zippy a few drops of Bach Rescue Remedy, which I keep on hand for her when she is upset. The best that I could do for myself was to clean up the house after I dropped rat poison down into the underside of the house. Still, I felt bad at the thought of rats dying a painful death. Hopefully they would eat the poison and go back down to the river for water and stay there to perish. This is so sad but wild rats carry diease.

A  few days later, after working late until the early morning, I decided to scan the TV before going to sleep and came across a TV station closed for the evening with its test pattern blaring away. Wow, all of a sudden the rats hiding in my attic, walls, and under the house started screaming for about 15 seconds. Absolute panic set in as the rats screamed and chattered to each other. I was so intrigued by the rats behavior that I cranked up the volume of the TV so high I became worried the neighbors would wake up. Then all hell broke loose. The rats in my attic started to stampede. Then somewhere behind the bathroom wall, I could hear rats falling, hitting the side of the walls as they fell out of control from the attic and landed on the hard concrete floor under the house. It was like a scary scene out of a Steven King movie.

Well, the next night, there were no more rats trying to bite through the walls. Amazing! So now I am thinking this is wonderful until a few days later, when I am working late again and realize – we now have dead rats. Gag – the smell is a sickly sweet. Now what do I do? I can’t crawl under the house and remove the dead rats. I pulled out my arsenal of incense, vinegar, and cut up onions and placed them into bowls around the house to fumigate the air with sulfur as a medicinal cleanser.

The next day a relative comes over to visit and we both go to the grocery store a few hours later, only to realize we both reek of onions. So the onions have to go, and we leave the store with a bottle of Nil Odor.

Every morning, the first thing I do before I start my day is to light up incense and put a few drops of Nil Odor in my candle holders placed around the house. Zippy is not amused and is grumpy. I am grumpy. We cannot eat even though our mouths continue to water with disgust. You can’t swallow your salvia or you’ll vomit. We must wait a few weeks for nature to take its course. I burn Angelica root to purify the house of its undesirable ethereal forces.

Then, a few days later, I see something that is truly a gift from nature. Something I never, ever thought I would be so happy to see in my entire life. A fly! A fly in the middle of winter; buzzing around and searching for the source of that sickly sweet stench coming from the underside of the house. As gruesome as the thought is for fly eggs to turn into wiggly maggots and to feast to their delight, I am happy as I dance the dance of joy around the house. We have flies.

With all that I have had to go through as a Family Caregiver with Barry over the years, I have come to value the simple things in life, like a fly. That is a gift I am happy for. The sun is shining and the temperature is warming up and my windows are now open.

It will be a good Christmas.