Burdened By Care

Life’s chaos and some childhood needs briefly remedied by a run in the woods

Hey everyone—quick note:

As I sit down each week to write these essays, I do my best to create something real. Something honest and vulnerable and, at times, something afraid of itself. I know I am onto something when I press “publish” and wonder if I should have just kept my big mouth shut.

Some weeks I struggle to find a topic to dive into. Right now, however, I am living out a panoptic moment. I can see nothing else besides the tricky situation before me, and my recent essays have been an effort to navigate things and perhaps even better myself while in the thick of the muck.

I want to express to you my sincere THANKS for being here. You are my community of readers and writers, and knowing you are here is an uplift. I am so damn grateful for you.

With love—

Tom

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The first run back always feels really good. My body is free of the soreness that will inevitably come thereafter. My feet manage to somehow land perfectly between loose stones and jutting roots. The best running is a dance of unknown footing.

I lean deeply into raised banks and my torso glides parallel with the flat trail below. I fly atop the single track with glorious ease as if I never stopped. But I did stop. For months. Many months. Months during which I was so preoccupied with my mom’s well being that I couldn’t even squeeze in a quick lap in the nearby forest.

My glory days of running (Western States Endurance Run 2007)

When things get hectic in my life, running is often the first thing to fall off. I let it go even though it’s a readily-available stress reducer. I know darn well I should make room for it—cruise along at the speed of wind to the cadence of striding feet—but instead I frenetically live a blindered, mom-centric life as I type away inquiries to her doctor, research a strange charge on her credit card, buy more adult diapers on Amazon, and do everything I can to advocate for a woman whose ability to do so herself has become compromised.

Maybe the stroke she had is to blame for her fractured self sufficiency. Maybe it’s grief. Maybe she’s still suffering the somatic trauma of bones breaking in an unfamiliar shower. Or maybe she remains hazed by the fentanyl button pumps she self-administered at eight-minute intervals after surgery. Maybe all of this. Regardless, she needs a close watch and ongoing help. Hopefully only temporarily.

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Lately I tend to prioritize my mom’s well being over my own. Which is to say, I stop caring for myself as I care for her. Not ideal, I know, but it's where I’m at. I’m learning a lot about the singularly complex dynamic between a son and mother—mine and my mom’s. I wonder if the bitching I do to friends is an attempt to feel seen (it probably is). I wonder if helping her actually brings me a certain level of joy and satisfaction. No, it’s not that. It can’t be that. But if it is, I’m not ready to look at it. Our entanglement is perplexing.

I am my mother’s son. A mama’s boy, my dad once said, which bothered me because I didn’t want him to see me like that. Mama’s boy, some kids at school once said, which amounted to a wrestling match and a bloody lip. I had my mom’s gentle touch. I had her softness. I didn’t want people to know me this way, but it’s also exactly how I wanted to shine.

Like I said. Perplexing.

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Caretaking is terribly hard. When done right, it’s an all-encompassing chess match in which one player must stay a few moves ahead of the other. For safety, if nothing else. For respite. For a moment of peace. And also for sleep, which is nearly impossible since the hourly shuffles and grunts coming from my mom’s bedroom tell me she’s trying to reach the bedside commode. I can’t simply lay on the living room floor and just listen. She needs extra eyes and hands. She needs someone to remind her how she did it last time. There’s so much at stake with her every move. If I stop paying attention to the small things—even for a few minutes—I set her up for another disaster.

Years ago I watched my aunt care for my grandma. I regularly heard her speak about things for which, back then anyhow, I had no context, no genuine understanding. I was a willing ear to her vitriol. I often left our exchanges thinking she was exaggerating her reality. But I now know that even if she was distorting details, it was the result of being burdened by care. And that burden is real.

To truly caretake is to give all. To truly caretake is to drain, to deplete. To truly caretake is to voluntarily step into a thankless and mountainous chore to get done what needs to get done. It’s far more than a lot—and it’s impossible to truly understand this magnitude unless you’ve personally lived it.

My aunt’s reactions of spite and resentment were natural outcomes of being taxed to the hilt. Of being obligatorily pressed against a wall of responsibility. Now, many years later, I have a newfound compassion for what she did. Because I am now enduring a version of it and feel those same things. Love and hate live concurrently in my heart. It’s a peaceless place.

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During the last conversation I had with my dad, he asked me to look after my mom. His own end seemed far off, so I took his words with a grain of salt figuring we were discussing a hypothetical and far off future. He died two months later.

“Help me help mom,” my father said. For the first time ever, the man whose attention I forever tried (and failed) to earn asked for a favor. Most people think I’m caring for my mom because I’m a good son—but that is not the case. I look after her because I finally found a way to make my father proud.

I laugh at the futility of putting effort into pleasing my dead father. Frankly, it’s somewhat embarrassing to even mention it here. After all, I am a 52 year old man and ought to have such unmet childhood gaps sorted out. But I don’t. So I tirelessly monitor my aging mom. Meanwhile, she regularly mistakes me for her deceased husband. Calls me Jim, or hon, or babe. Tells her friends stories of her past using the pronoun “we” as she gestures in my direction, then becomes upset when I correct her. “I know,” she says. “I’m still getting used to dad being gone.” I get it. Because me too.

I want to care for my mom, but I also don’t. For example, I don’t want to help her get undressed. I don’t want to clean up her feces when she waits too long to use the bathroom. I don’t want to quick grab a towel to catch cascading urine as it dribbles down her leg onto her bedroom rug. I don’t want to coddle her. Or force a compassionate smile and exaggerate my reassurance. I don’t want to say, “You’re doing great!” when she’s actually doing the opposite. I don’t want her to wish I was proud of her. I don’t want her to try and please me.

I don’t want to help my mom any more than is necessary—because I want her to feel empowered and independent. I want her to use the grabber to pick up her own soiled adult diaper and put it in the trash. I don’t want her to report back to me about the reddish discharge on her pad. I don’t want to apply pain-reducing salve on her back. I don’t want to kneel down and put socks on her flaky feet.

I don’t want to incessantly remind my mom what motions her feet must do in order to take a step. I don’t want to be poised to catch her naked body as she steps out of the shower. I don’t want to tell her, again, that her aide is coming at 3:00, not 12:00. I don’t want to tell her, again, that the pain in her back is a fractured vertebra, not a pinched nerve. This new life with my mom is wrought with don’ts.

What I do want—I want my mom to be able to live like she did before. But I fear this is an impossible aspiration. She’ll likely recover from her surgery, but her baseline will be a far cry from what it was before. She will need more—and her needs are a major disruption. An unwelcome disturbance. I recognize this is a harsh way to frame it. But it’s 100% accurate and true.

Since my dad died, all aspects of my life have become twisted and knotted. So tangled, in fact, that sometimes I just want to lop it off and start afresh. And maybe this is why running reentered my life. It knew I needed help and pushed its way back into the forefront of my consciousness. The best friends are present when things are toughest.

I am grateful to renew my old routine of lacing up shoes and hitting trails for a casual plod on circuitous trails. This pastime has meant so much to me in years past. It’s been with me in the hardest of times, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that it is back. Running helps me better see the big picture—the one enveloped by love for family and a genuine desire to offer help where I can. Running is reminding me that the only way to sustain all this output of care is to commit to some sort of input of care, too.

Through running I’ve found something akin to solace. It’s a crucial activity for my well being. For my mental health.

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Tomorrow every bit of me will feel the effects of today’s traipse through the woods. My hamstrings will smart, and most especially when I first get out of bed. But that’s ok, because my soreness will be proof that I’m taking care of myself. I will enjoy this resulting pain as much as I did the run itself.

There’s also the leaves. The palette of seasonal yellows and browns, the occasional reds and pinks swathing in the upper boughs. I am mesmerized by the letting go of each individual leaf. I collide with them as they drop. One hits my arm, another my chest, another my face. Each has changed from a lively green into something darker, something stiffer. They crunch underfoot. Each leaf falls and becomes a new part of the ecosystem. Its fading is, in fact, an offering.

I wonder about the odds of us coming together like this. About the reason, the value, of our sudden intimacy. “Hey there, leaf,” I say as it hits my body. And because I don’t know tree types so well, I leave out specifics like oak or maple or birch or cherry.

There is so much I don’t know about the living things around me. So much I’ll never know. And since learning about a thing enriches my relationship with it, I commit to learning more about the trees around me. I commit to better understanding their stories.

I slow down for the next few strides and am suddenly overcome by the abundance. All this living and dying. All this perfect chaos. For a moment I understand that all is unfolding perfectly. And since I need more of these moments, I’ll keep running.