What Have I Learned?

I've been a little reflective lately. (I just smiled at myself for using "reflective" - an image popped into my head of me walking about and having things bounce off me - probably not funny to anyone but me.) At any rate I've been thinking about the last 9 years or more and what I've learned if anything.

More years really because the time before the start of caregiving is so entwined with the caregiving itself.

It, that is the reflecting, started casually enough. A man who shares a lot of years of history with me was telling me about his own visit with another mutual friend. They were remembering and talking about people we all knew. One man knew what had become of one person from our past and the other man knew about someone else. So my friend was passing on to me the information he had learned.

There was a customer who died of a brain aneurysm and a fellow worker who was now in prison. Another associate's son had served time for tax evasion. A person now worked one place and another person someplace else. One's wife had died but his son had married and was now a father himself. Another man, nearly as old as my own father, had suffered the loss of his third wife to death but he had married again for the fourth time. Babies then, are now grown and having babies of their own. Happy and sad events all stirred together and so typical of life as we find it and more real to us because we know the people and care about them.

I suppose that conversation really didn't start the fire but maybe fanned the smoldering coals. And then the movie, "It's A Wonderful Life", was on last night and that added fuel to make a full blown conflagration. Conflagrations aren't easily controlled. The entire "Wonderful Life" movie is one giant reflection itself.

I learned a lot of stuff is the answer to all my reflecting.

For one thing, and a lesson appreciated more than once, I learned that my past life had prepared me for my present. That's a pretty good lesson and a rather useful one, especially for people like me who always want to be prepared.

And another is that I can do many more things than I ever thought I could. That, too, is a pretty good lesson.

Nothing lasts forever is one that got me through quite a few things.

Calmness and love is transferable. So is anger and hate but calmness and love is stronger.

Being always trumps doing. Learned that first I think just by sitting on the porch with Dad and Mom. Sometimes we just sat there, the three of us, in our old lawn chairs and never said a word for long stretches of time. And later learned it better by sitting there beside both of them when we awaited death.

Forgiveness is stronger than anything. I guess that's the same thing as written in 1 Corinthians 13: "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

People are a lot stronger and more resilient and capable than I thought. People can also be uncaring and insufferable and downright mean and nasty.

It's really nice to have some blog friends that have experienced the same things.

There's more but I'm tired now and kind of have it out of my system.