The feeling family caregivers never admit to, why it shows up, and what it is actually telling you.
Some night this winter you’re going to be driving home from her house and a thought is going to arrive that you’d never say out loud.
Something along the lines of: I can’t do this for another five years. Or worse, and more honest than anybody wants to be, a thought about how long this is going to go on.
And then the shame lands on top of it, hard, and you decide you’re a terrible person, and you don’t tell anybody, ever.
Here’s what we’d want you to know. That thought shows up in nearly every family caregiver we’ve ever met. It doesn’t mean you don’t love her. It means a person can love somebody completely and still be at the end of what they have, and both of those things can sit in the same car on the Parkway at nine at night.
Resentment isn’t a character defect. It’s a reading on a gauge. It shows up when someone has been giving out more than is coming in for a long stretch, and it tends to arrive right around the point where everything else has already been cut. You quit the gym, you stopped calling your friends, you gave up the vacation, and resentment is what’s left when there’s nothing else to subtract.
Which means it isn’t telling you to feel worse. It’s telling you that the arrangement needs to change.
Usually not by much. The families who get out from under this don’t overhaul anything. They hand off one recurring piece. The Tuesday morning. The showers. The ride to the cardiologist. The point is that something leaves your plate permanently, not that you get a nice weekend once.
The thought will come back. Let it be information instead of evidence.
Seniors Helping Seniors® Jersey Shore North
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