Primary Caregiver
It’s such a clinical-sounding term, “primary caregiver”. Accurate, yes, but cold. I prefer her other title: Mom.
With Sunday being a milestone birthday, I thought I’d tell you more about her.
She’s been present in a lot of my posts, but I’ve never dedicated one to her. Not because she doesn’t deserve the words, but because my words will never be as good as what she deserves.
When you become a mom, you sign up for 24/7 care of another human being for approximately 16 years. Then your shifts get shorter, but your worrying multiplies. Then, before you can say, “child, you will never know the volume of my love for you,” your child is an adult. As you watch them deal with challenges — education, jobs, relationships, and more — you just can’t believe the miracle that this little piece of you has become. If you’re lucky, they keep you on as an advisor, but the brunt of your work is done.
My mom moved into the role of Grammy a few years after graduating from full-time mom, and she killed it. My kids grew up spending nights with my mom and dad, traveling, camping, and learning what unconditional love looks like. They ate more ice cream than they were supposed to, and they cannot function on Christmas Day unless they’ve had at least three of her cinnamon rolls. They found out that there was no peewee, JH, JV, or Varsity football game too far for their grandparents to travel to.
The boys are big now. In every sense of the word. Grammy’s job is winding down. But just as they began to achieve adolescent status, my phone rang, and Grammy got called back into full-time Mom duty.
Luella, your daughter has Stage IV Colorectal Cancer. She’s got a lot of great friends, but she lives alone and is gonna need someone to wait on her hand and foot sometimes, maintain her house, get her kids places with very little notice (because even when they get big, they still don’t plan much beyond what they’re doing right now). She’s going to react badly to the first couple of infusions, so she’s going to need someone to talk to the doctor on call and to drive her up to the hospital when it becomes clear that she really needs to be seen. How are you at driving fast, but not too fast? How are you at not talking when your soul just needs to converse with your child because hearing her voice is the only comfort you can find in those scary moments?
I’ll answer. She’s better at it than anyone I’ve ever known and better at it than I could ever be.
She knows God’s got this, even if I’m not as sure. She wakes up at the time she needs to wake up to get me to the place I need to be at the time I need to be there. She gets me breakfast, touches the cold things I can’t touch, makes breakfast for me and my pets, gets our groceries, and cleans my house like I never did, even before I got cancer. She and Dad “pop down” to Pennsylvania to get her lymphoma treated, then come back up to spend the holidays with us.
Because who else would make those cinnamon rolls?
She’s an incredible person who I’m blessed to call my mom, lucky to call my friend, and, well, stuck with calling my “primary caregiver”.
Thanks, Luella, and Happy 70th Birthday. I love you.