It makes my heart glad to remember that I got the privilege to spend at least a few of his last years with my grandpa taking care of him and taking care of me. At first, not quite understanding who I was, how important caregiving was to me as a person, I judged myself as a failure. I thought that I hadn’t become the person I was supposed to be because I couldn’t stay in the graduate program I had started in my late thirties. I had separated and divorced from my wife Erin, who had been my companion through so many changes. I felt lonely and crushed by the weight of experience. I felt a sense of shame, truly, that permeated all I did.
At the same time that all this loss was happening to me and in me, I had the chance to start something creative and new with my grandpa. I can see the gift of each and every day somehow in a way that notices the force and scope to transform my life as I look back. Because I took care of my grandpa, I learned how to make space in myself and my way of acting and being in the world that could take in all the goodness of my relationships with others, which was based on feeling a deep affinity for who I was at core as a caregiver to myself, to those I love, and to the world around me.
The more we read about caregiving in America, the more that we will realize that our way of being a society and economy undervalues the moral, spiritual, and material worth of caregiving. It is seen as spiritual, intrinsically motivating, and therefore opposed to the creation of economic (material) value. Thus we often, generally throughout society, do not pay those who do this kind of work well enough to live with sufficient means. I am by no means a proponent of socialized medical systems, but we should realize that countries that compensate caregiving at higher rates tend to have care more widely distributed throughout social classes. I would say that spiritual, moral, and economic value cannot be distinguished from each other in practice.
But before we caught up in criticism of our society in a way that eclipses this blessing of learning how to care, consider that people like my grandpa that test our view of what a person is affirm that all human being and life, indeed all being and life on our planet, is a gift. They affirm that there is something sacred going on when we meet each other without an agenda. Martin Buber, famous Jewish theologian who wrote just before the Nazis were testing this premise with dehumanizing extermination camps, calls this the I-Thou relationship. Ostensibly this I-Thou dyad expresses our recognition of ourselves in relationship with a divine other, like a God who loves and cherishes us in a way that completely accepts each and every part of us.
Yet, good Zen Buddhist that I am, I would say that we need to understand that we are all doing this kind of recognizing or failure to recognize all the time in how we live. When I would see my grandpa as he was in the moment, somewhat diminished but still vibrant, and remember who he was, I could receive the gift of him for that day. I didn’t do this all the time, but I did do it enough to be thankful for who he was as a loving son, brother, husband, father, grandfather, veteran of the Second World War, educator, counselor, fisherman, lover of words, poet, and country boy who jumped on trains and rode them to distant cities in Ohio with his brothers during the depression. And I could honor the mysterious and beautiful person who could always emerge in flashes even to the last days of his life. I could also fail to see him or others, and I often do.
We all do when we get caught up in our troubles and afflictions. At the same time, our troubles and our afflictions can invite us to connect to others and realize that we all feel pain and suffer. So, why not wish others, and myself included, to be free of pain and suffering, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune? Why not say when we feel pain and suffering, may you (and I) have peace and ease of body, mind, and spirit this day and all days? Why not wish for blessing even in the darkest times? We are bound together by mutual recognition, and caregiving in the wreckage of my personal life taught me that new being always is pushing through the ashes of our loss. When we slow down enough to care properly, we recognize this gift of presence that we are giving each other.
