The beginning of the grass dike is almost impossible to take, it is so muddy and slippery, but after that it becomes easy again. So at the risk of slipping and ending up in the mud, I look for a way. I have been walking for fifteen minutes, but only now do I see the surroundings, the empty fields, the puddles, the group of trees in the distance and the Arriva train on its way to Loppersum station. Until this moment I was nowhere, well: in my own head.
That head was thinking about shifting boundaries. No, not the boundaries that are constantly being crossed according to reports, the own boundaries of what seems tolerable to you, what someone can handle.
The patient had only recently been declared incurable when he was already lying on the couch feeling very sick. Pain, vomiting, misery. I started calling. And to call again. And again. The doctor could not come until the next day, the hospital answered the question: “What should I do?” “Call the doctor.”
Help! Help!
Eventually the pain relief started to work and the patient became calmer. Panic is over for a moment.
Many more unbearable situations followed in the weeks that followed. Anxiety attacks. Delusions in which someone cannot be reached. The abysmal loneliness of a human being, you think you have the magic formula: ‘I am with you’, but you do not conjure anything at all.
Help! Something has to happen!
What you thought you could do and what you couldn’t. 200 kilometers from home in a dark, smoke-filled room in a very polluted house – normally after two hours I would find it unbearable. Now I moved in for a while. People clean and tidy up, they tolerate the oppressive smoke.
Fortunately, after a week there were two of us caring for the sick person. For the vomit and shit. For the fear too, the panic, our own and his.
Ultimately there is always a solution, said the young woman from a home care organization who, after a short conversation with the sick person, determined that she could not take on this care, her small organization was not equipped for this. But neither do we, I sobbed, and soon I will be alone again. What then?
Still, I enjoyed the conversation with her. Because she was there.
What do you actually mean by providing care, I wondered? Caring certainly does not mean that everything can be solved. In recent weeks I have really come to understand that. Caring is: thinking of and doing small practical things, like the home care organization eventually found does. Care is listening in the middle of the night for noise downstairs and then quickly rushing over, like my brother does.
And so it is true, thoughts are messy when you walk so unseeing that you push your boundaries. Where you first think: this is no longer possible, something has to be done NOW, you slowly but surely come to terms with the situation. The rapidly deteriorating patient, the true fear of death – it’s all part of it. Just like one’s own despair, sometimes.
Yes, pain and suffering and illness and care, they are part of it. You know that, who doesn’t say it, but when the situation is so miserable, you want to believe that misery is not part of it. Yet ‘solution’ is not the right word. Above all, there is something that you need to wear together. And that you have to persevere yourself: by being home for a while and going for a walk and seeing that the path here is very muddy.
Where do I put my foot? Over there. I’m not falling.