Follow-Up

L* was reading my last entry, and then we talked about it.

She drew a couple of interesting analogies: one has to do with family members abusing drug and alcohol. When a family member is in the midst of that, there’s nothing you can do about it, but worry, and the stress and anxiety can be devastating. Now, she’s not saying that my care-giving is some kind of sick co-dependency (grin): it is in fact necessary and healthy. And L* is not an addict ignoring the effects of her actions on everybody else. But there is a certain similarity there of a feeling of powerlessness (the 12-step language is “I didn’t Cause it, I can’t Cure it, and I can’t Control it”).

There was a time in my life when I believed my love, my will alone could cure. That was before I learned some humbling lessons in mortality.

L* also drew from Hayden White to talk about Agency and Patiency. The Patient has no Agency: when L* is being wheeled off to surgery, it is all totally out of her hands, and there’s powerlessness in that too, but there’s also a freedom from the kind of worry that her parents and I were left with.