“I’m such a nuisance” Dad mutters to me, his tone of disgust unmistakeable.
My heart constricts and I tear up, “Oh Dad. No. You’re not a nuisance. We are just figuring out how to use this new technology together. It will get easier with practice.”
I attempt again to back his walker/rolling seat contraption out of the bathroom and into the narrow hallway of my parents’ tiny home. With barely an inch of clearance on each side, it’s not easy. We bump walls and doors as I maneuver the walker clumsily.
It’s only his first day at home after his 7-week rehab stay, and we both need to learn to use this new walker. The facility he’s just returned from has big, wide hallways. He had professional help there to assist in his limited mobility.
He seems to calm down now, after the heavy exertion to make it through the narrow bathroom and onto the toilet, then back again. “We’re in no rush, Dad. Let’s just take it slow.”
Using his walker like a wheelchair, I pull it backward so we can settle in for dinner. He tucks into the beans, rice, and chicken tacos like he hasn’t eaten in a week. The food at Cornerstone was the least appealing part of his stay. We want to build up his strength by making sure he’s getting enough calories.
His voice echoes in my mind as I eat, though. My heart feels at once tender and heavy, empathizing deeply with the fear of being a nuisance. Where am I also a nuisance?
Maybe those times when I talk too much and my husband asks for some quiet. Or when my exhuberance overflows and is too much for the people around me, based on their facial expressions.
When we believe we are a nuisance, we shame ourselves over some quality that feels like a fatal flaw. We feel shame over needing help and embarrassed that our daughter that we raised from infancy now has to assist with intimate parts of daily living.
The last thing I want is for my dad to feel shame. After tumbling down some steps of the basement stairs two months ago, he was hospitalized for a week and then sent to a rehab facility to help him regain function and balance. It had limited success.
Until we have our neurology visit on April 29th, his balance is unlikely to improve. In my spare time I binge podcasts on Parkinson’s Disease and notice how many similarities describe the pattern I’ve seen in my Dad. I desperately want to help him return some of the function he used to have, that motivated him to hit the gym at least three days a week for decades.
I consider a reality where this might be impossible. The sadness of this scenario is too much for me to bear. When we speak with him, we talk about “when” he’s coming home, not “if” it will be possible.
It’s likely that Dad’s decades of commitment to exercise and healthy eating is the reason he has no sign of heart disease at age 81, and no diabetes. His metabolic panels show numbers enviable for retirees much younger than him. And yet, he lamented to Mom a few days ago over the phone, “I’m handicapped now.”
She felt sorry to hear him say this, especially given her own physical challenges. Dad was her anchor while her own body went through challenges, surgeries, and treatments. Did she feel like a nuisance?
Sometimes, she confesses to me. But she needed help and she learned to accept it, though reluctantly.
The cultural myth of rugged individualism leaves out the scaffolding and community support that allows for individual successes. And it shames those who either permanently or temporarily aren’t able to contribute their labor to a system not designed to receive it.
I’m beginning to re-direct the harmful conditioning that used to make me feel like a nuisance, like a drain on friends or family, when I dared to ask for help. The shame I felt in accepting unemployment at the start of the pandemic when my contract was ended abruptly has given way to gratitude. I contributed my energy and attention within system that opted me out at a vulnerable time. I wasn’t a nuisance, I just wasn’t a fit anymore.
Today I aim to be less and less a fit in a capitalist framework that relies on unpaid labor to care for elders, while simultaneously devaluing and marginalizing this work. Perhaps I’ll voluntarily make a nuisance of myself to the politicians and elected leaders who endorse “business as usual” while ignoring how it robs us of our humanity.
Like my guest
said in a recent Somatic Wisdom podcast, “I think the real legacy of the industrial revolution is that we lost our humanity, right?”Right. Humanity may feel like a nuisance, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
I love how brilliantly you articulate the experiences that are born from unchecked individualism, and it feels so wonderful to know that the "antidote" is greater human connection. Love always wins!
💚 love to you and your family Cristy.
Thank you for sharing your stories along the way 🙏