Reply #15: That's a facet I'm vaguely seeing.

[TahitiNut]

There's a mixture of relief and grief in me ... a Yin-Yang cycle. I wish she'd lived to see her 90th birthday in September and we'd had a party ... but I'm glad she lived to see 89, which is more than her parents or four brothers did. It was a horrible three weeks punctuating a very difficult 7 months at the end of a laborious 6.5 years ... but she didn't have to live out her final days in a prolonged state of vegetative and painful lingering in a nursing home. The suffocation and system failures that come from COPD are difficult, but nowhere nearly as bad as many cancers or Alzheimer's. I'm overwhelmed with what faces me in terms of clean-up and recovery ... but am hopeful that there're some good times over the horizon.

In my entire life, I NEVER foresaw (or would have believed) that I would be a caregiver for my mother and living in this situation. It's really remarkable to me how Life 'secretly' gives us just barely enough 'lessons' (which we often doubt) to cope with what befalls us. For some years now, I've been forced to note that there's some WARNING in receiving the 'gifts' of intelligence or good looks or physical fitness as we begin our lives ... since the WARNING is we're gonna NEED those 'gifts' to deal with what's coming. As I contemplate, for example, "kids with something extra" (Downs Syndrome), I'm forced to regard their sunny outlook and incredibly LOVING propensity as the flip-side of the Life WARNING the more 'gifted' of us receive (but usually don't recognize).

While I too am ambivalently inclined to both "put a face" on other DUers in this area, I'm also hesitant ... since "what is essential is invisible to the eye" and I know that we all have deeply-ingrained habits of letting people's OUTSIDES affect what we 'see' more than their INSIDES as reflected in DU interactions.