A Wonderful Woman to Love

It is not always evident how to do it well, let alone how to do it best. Guiding someone you love along a path meandering between convalescence and demise, let alone preparing both of us for the latter. This is especially true between two soul mates, as the expectations are higher. 

You want to make the most of the remaining days by interacting, verbally or otherwise, as much as you can. But a patient has other preoccupations besides talking to you or even holding hands. Trying to keep your food down, for example. Nursing a coughing fit. Or taking a nap because are just too tired. Other people lay claim to the patient as well: the nurses come in twice a day, the doctor several times a week, the nurse coordinator twice a week, the hospices are hovering about from 9 to 8. In addition there are meals and prolonged naps. Waking hours have to be shared by occasional visitors, skype conversations and phone and nature calls. I am not begrudging anybody for wanting to have quality time with my wife. After all, they may be next-of-kin, dear friends or benevolent neighbors. They all have an understandable claim. Lara loves to see them, in measured doses. Then there are business matters to discuss, transactions to be performed, loose ends tied up. And we talk over the breakfast table, about topical issues. But alltogether there are precious few waking moments where, say, a husband and a wife, can cut out intimate time alone. (That is one of the reasons why we did away with the night nurses, since 24/7 became too oppressing.)

But how do you use the opportunities for quality time to mutual and maximum benefit?

Not so easy, if intuition is pretty much your only guide. I have no formal training.

I, for one, relive memories with relish. It helps me cope with the thick atmosphere hanging in the house, even though reminiscing rips my soul. By happenstance I started browsing among the hundreds of pictures in my PC, and became increasingly emotional. I was reminded that Lara is a lush and wonderful woman to love. I would jump up time and again and show Lara some exciting photo transporting us back to sunny places over several years. After a few times of this, Lara couldn't take it anymore. She is too much preoccupied with the hic et nunc and the immediate future, to be revisiting times past.  So that was not the right approach. 

Once, after a flurry of messages had come in from all parts of the world, including some unexpected ones, I made the point to Lara that she had amassed so many people who look up to her, or hold her dear, or both, that the accomplishment alone was enough to fill a life. She didn't want to hear of it, adding she would rather not exercise her obituary every day. So that was not the right approach either.

Quiet presence works. Holding hands works. Any form of tenderness. It is just verbal intercourse that is harder, connoting as it does a choice of material for conversation. You soon find out, that we have said to each other pretty much everything there is to say over twenty years of marriage. Every relevant fiber of human relations has been worked and exercised. 

So in the end you just go with the flow. I take my cue from Lara and pop in myself with anything that comes to mind. And I let the chips fall where they may.

What else can you do?