I identify with that feeling of wandering the seashore, looking baleful.
December 5, 2016 4:11 AM   Subscribe

 
Yes.
posted by Mogur at 4:47 AM on December 5, 2016


This is so good! Thanks!
posted by corb at 5:42 AM on December 5, 2016


I love all of the Anne books. Leslie in house of dreams was a really good character. I haven't even read this yet and I know it's going to be good.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 6:14 AM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


That was a heartbreaking book in many ways, and she nails it all.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:24 AM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]


Yes.

To elaborate on my first comment: even though our situations are different (her spouse will recover, mine will not), I identify so much with her struggle to keep it together through the daily assault. With how everything gets chipped away until all that's left is the caregiving interspersed with carefully rationed self-care -- and what it's like when you're doing all that right and it's still not enough. Favoriting.
posted by Mogur at 6:26 AM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]


The author describes her reaction to being told she has to take care of herself or she can't take care her husband:
"an act of so-called self-care that felt like yet another task I resented, yet another obligation I had to fulfill to hold everything together"

That's so true, that we will blithely (intended) tell people to secure their own oxygen mask first without having any idea of what they're going through and how incredibly hard that is.

When my dad was sick, I stayed with him at the hospital almost 24/7. The staff told me I should go rest, but how could i go anywhere else?
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 6:32 AM on December 5, 2016 [11 favorites]


That was so difficult to read (in a good way). And so beautifully done. I've watched my mom go through this with my dad (he's now in a nursing home, and she's still trying to find a way to bring him home regardless - it's the insurance, not the weight of the care load, that's stopping her), and it just makes you feel so helpless. My heart goes out to her and anyone in her situation.
posted by Mchelly at 6:40 AM on December 5, 2016


So heartbreaking and so true. Illness can take over so many lives, not only the lives of those who have the illness, but all of those who have to take on the caring for that person, especially the spouse or children.
posted by xingcat at 6:45 AM on December 5, 2016


Already toast.

Wow. Thanks for posting.
posted by minsies at 6:52 AM on December 5, 2016


Just finished a run of a stage version (not the musical) of the first novel with my high school drama students. Audiences and kids like the story because it's a fantasy gone right, of that "I must be adopted" or "I'm all alone" narrative. But there are hints of this last novel in the way Anne's dreams are confronted by Matthew's death, and Marilla's aging. I'd like to find a stage script for this last novel to present - the fantasy becoming reality.

(As I am caring for my aging father - 96 and in hospital awaiting placement in a full care facility - I find the sheer joy of kids playing Anne and Diana and Gilbert a helpful antidote to the drudgery of my relationship with Dad. I don't wish this for anyone, but it's important to be brought back to a less "twee" reality.)

Thanks for the link.
posted by kneecapped at 6:55 AM on December 5, 2016 [4 favorites]


Thanks for posting, excellent essay.
posted by chapps at 8:56 AM on December 5, 2016


Especially liked revisiting that argument between Anne and Gilbert about the right of the patient to the truth and health vs the right of the wife to safety.

Beyond the obvious connection to this essay --the rights of women as contrasting to societal expectation of caregivers-- it also reaches broader to the struggle of competing rights, LMM foreshadowing the debates about competing rights that arise in the Canadian constitution!
posted by chapps at 9:05 AM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


Finally, I appreciated the author calling out self-care when it descends into being a means to regulate women*, or to make a societal issue (the lack of adequate home care) into a personal issue (a personal failure to keep up with a spouse's duties).

*as always, the expectation of free care based on an assumption that women are always available to be the nurse also negatively affects men who provide free care giving. The structure is gendered, but the impact is not always gendered.
posted by chapps at 9:09 AM on December 5, 2016 [5 favorites]


That's so true, that we will blithely (intended) tell people to secure their own oxygen mask first without having any idea of what they're going through and how incredibly hard that is.

yes, god. People wouldn't tell this writer's husband to do his own cancer "self-care" (one hopes) but the secure-your-own-mask-first instruction to people like her is not as far from that as they presumably believe. "Get help" is what we say when we are not interested in offering a person any help, ourselves.

The idea that you can't help other people unless you take time for yourself first is also just plain not true and not said by anybody who has been in a real continuing emergency. sometimes you do have to decide and you only get to pick one. For most people in this situation, even if they can afford hired help sometimes, there are going to be long stretches of time when they are the only able person in the home and taking a few minutes to stretch or have a glass of wine in the kitchen or go for a walk outside or go to sleep for an hour means the person they are looking after may literally die. doesn't mean you don't ever do it, unless you are a better person than me, but the stress of knowing that THIS time could be the time they stop breathing because you weren't there to notice can undo the stress relief of whatever feeble thing you are trying to do for yourself.
posted by queenofbithynia at 11:51 AM on December 5, 2016 [3 favorites]


I wanted to shake the oncologist and then I thought how that was a defensive move by medical staff because acknowledging the enormous amount of unpaid labour and trauma on the family would require the doctors to take on additional professional responsibility. Deliberately ignoring their suffering would be a way to efficiently move through your schedule and treat just the medical case of the patient in front of you.

There's probably a case to be made for someone like a critical illness doula, someone who knows the medical system but is an advocate for the patient and family and can help them as a holistic whole - economically, I bet that would actually save money overall in having a lot more efficiency for a an expert knowing who to call and organising things better and reducing disasters and delays.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 6:27 PM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]


This is horrible. And to think that the sick person is (presumably) suffering even worse than the caretaker...

Hospice care is supposed to be set up to do all this, whether the sick person is dying or not. They come to your home. (Where available.) Worth checking into, if you are not aware of this.
posted by serena15221 at 1:39 PM on December 6, 2016


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