Who Can I Turn To?

Looks like we're into song titles here lately. This one refers to the phenomenon of getting older and needing to be taken care of.

On Monday evening, Rudi went to see our favorite vet to get updated on his shots before his new best friend Marcello comes home. Dr. Boyer gave him some Benadryl to alleviate his trauma with the regimen of shots he needed. So within an hour of getting back home, he was stretched out on the couch — a real couch catato — and I had to pick him up and carry him to the bed when I turned in. During the night I woke up and looked over; he hadn't moved! Suddenly I wondered if he was dead, so reached over to lay my hand on him to see if I could feel him breathing.

This brought back a whole raft of memories from John's illness.

At the end of March 1998, three months before his death, John fell and broke numerous ribs (his bones were filled with cancer, so the breaks were not surprising). This resulted in horrible pain for him and he had difficulty sitting up, lying down, difficulty with movements such as those. We got a walker, a recliner with a seat that would lift him to standing position, and a hospital bed. We positioned the hospital bed right next to our bed so I could sleep on our bed and he on the hospital bed and we could still hold hands while we fell asleep. He continued to deteriorate and after about a month I started worrying that he would die in the middle of the night and I wouldn't know about it until morning. So when we got close to sleep, I would turn around and put my head at the foot of the bed, then stretch my arm out so my hand was resting on his chest and I could feel his chest rise and fall with each breath. And this is how we would sleep.

I don't know how he felt about that; I never asked. It was what I needed to do for my own peace of mind. We didn't talk much about his feelings about the whole illness and his approaching death. But I did my very best to take good care of him, to smooth out the rocky road he had to travel. Once, early on, he wrote me a note and left it where I would find it. It said, "bless you for caring for me."

And now I am again trying to find someone to walk through the rest of my life with. As I meet and get to know each man, I automatically wonder how I would feel about again being the primary caregiver if something were to happen to him. I wonder what kind of caregiver he would be if something were to happen to me. I wonder how I would feel about having to depend on him for care — I'm not very good about letting other people do things for me. Relying on someone to that degree is enormously scary for me and probably related to all my abandonment and rejection issues from the adoption.

This caregiving issue should probably be a topic of discussion for all people over 50 who are considering a long-term relationship. But how do you know how you'll react to a situation such as that — You don't. You can't. You can't possibly know how you'll react until you're in the middle of the situation.

Mr. Match had some health issues midway into our three months. I had, over the past eight years, thought that I would run screaming from the building if ever presented with something like that by someone I was involved with. But I didn't. My reaction surprised and pleased me. I realized at that moment that I'm the kind of person who rises to the occasion, who does what needs to be done, who puts one foot in front of the other to keep going until the task is completed.

But how do you determine of your potential Significant Other that he is the kind of person who will rise to the occasion, rather than racing out the door, if the need arises?