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my hands ache

 Yesterday, I started crocheting a hat for Bob.  It's a mess, and I'll have to do some of it over.  More frustrating is how my 52 year old hands ache - as if I was elderly.  It hurts to hold my coffee cup this morning.  

Last night Bob was ill - and I often think of these things from my perspective -  the work involved to clean up someone who cannot move.  I was struck this time, though, what it must be like for him - immobile as his body rebels, laying in his own mess, forced to let the person he used to make love to clean it and him up.  Neither one of us is in a good place with this.

I think that's the true struggle of caregiving - no matter how bad it gets for me - and it gets terrible sometimes - it will always be worse for him.  And while it isn't a competition, a caregiver feels invisible and unseen when all the focus goes to someone else.


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