Harrumph!

I find that I am more comfortable doing for others than I am being done for. That seems to fit with my preference to praise others rather than be praised.

With my shattered leg healing in its own ossifying time, I have had little choice on being cared for and catered to. My wife in particular has done my work, what used to be my work. She has been cooking and shopping, she shoveled a foot of snow, including digging out our vehicles today, and she cleaned and prepared for that church dinner with 16 guests almost solo.

In what must be largely efforts to make myself feel better and more useful, I have done a few things my feebleness allowed. I staggered and leaned into the fridge to empty and reseat the meat drawer she could not figure out how to reinstall. I cleaned the upstairs bath, at least from the sink level and above for that dinner. Otherwise, I feel like a barnacle on the ship of family.

Our youngest is still living home. He, if not cheerfully, at least willingly has helped as I ask. I can’t carry a cup or plate with my crutches. I try to stuff self-assembled lunches into a bag I can carry, but he does for me.

My wife though does the care-taking.  She brings me meals when I am too sore or pained to thump down 13 stairs. She moves the crutches or walker from floor to floor as helps me.

Perhaps worst from my perspective, she has emptied and returned the urinal  bottle I used when I simply could not navigate to the bathroom during the night. While we were both active parents to all three of ours, changing and cleaning up from all manner of egesta top and bottom, being in a prolonged state where someone has to carry away my urine because I am unable to do this most basic of functions the way American Standard intended is humiliating.

Granted I should not be so self-absorbed. Many are more disabled by birth, disease or injury. Probably if my infirmities continue or worsen instead the likely healing in the next two months, I would become more accepting and less emotional.

Yet, as the standard-issue liberal sort, I have to wonder now what these thoughts and feelings reveal. Might I come out of this a bit improved, as well?

I grew up in a family of volunteers and do-gooders. I have done that first by being swept along in the helpfulness and duty of my mother from elementary school and then formal volunteering from early teens. I’ve varied the intensity but never stopped.

Now I am again on the being-helped end. Once before, 16 years ago, we were in need. At eight months pregnant, my ever avant wife broke her ankle just walking down the steps of the back deck. I had recently been moderately crippled when a big disk (L5/S1) went into my spine. We were a mess, but we had some meal deliveries from church and my in-laws arrived to nurse us (really her).

I could urinate well enough on my own, thank you very much, but I was reduced to shuffling around. I bulled through cooking for everyone, but each meal was a mini-death march. Yet in my self-interest, standing to cook was far less painful than sitting or lying.

That period should have pointed me to my odd concept of preferring to do for others. It did not. I was busy trying to be as fully functional as possible, while taking care of my more-broken wife.

So, now I have something specific to meditate on. What is my relationship with helping — helping others or being helped?

Again, this brings up a chuckling point. Probably my most repeated question to my sons as they grew and met disappointment or distress was, “What can we learn from this?”.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, need, philanthropy, family, community