the waiting game

This is possibly one of the most difficult things I will ever write in my life. But I think it’s important for me to put this piece out there because I’m convinced that I cannot be the only person in this world who feels this way. I want to be able to reach out to others who have these feelings and I want to be able to start an extremely difficult conversation.

This piece is for everyone who cares for a terminally ill family member and struggles with the emotional and mental load of it all. This piece is for anyone who has ever felt like they are waiting to move on with their life but can’t until their terminally ill loved one dies. This is for everyone who feels guilty for ever wishing death upon a loved one. This is for anyone who has felt like the emotional blackmail of family life is suffocating them. This is for anyone who has urgently felt the need to be mentally free and emotionally free one day. This is for those who fantasize about getting rid of owning people and getting rid of owning things and dying themselves. This is for those who are simply waiting.

Seven years ago, my dad was diagnosed with chronic renal failure stage four.  He is now on stage five  and battling for his life in the ICU.  It is unlikely he is going to make it. But we are waiting. Some days, I wait for a miracle. Some days, I wait for death. Some days, I feel like his death would be the miracle.

My mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer four years ago. She died last year. I felt at peace on the day she died.

This feeling of peace is a hard emotion to negotiate and a harder one to explain to yourself. It is hard because feeling at peace is in direct contrast to the expectation of tears - the burden of tears that you think is the natural response to bereavement. It was a revelation to me when I finally learnt that grief is sometimes in the feeling of peace and not in the outpouring of tears.

I was at peace because she was at peace. I was at peace because someone I loved so much was finally free of the body that caused her so much pain. I was at peace because I could finally feel exhausted. Because when you are caring for a terminally ill patient who is undergoing slow suffering there are days and months and years where you simply don’t have the time to feel exhausted. You can’t. You won’t. And when you do, you will hate yourself for it.

And now a year later, I find myself waiting. I am waiting for my father to die. I was waiting even before we took my father to the hospital. I started waiting around the time he slipped into a maniacal cycle of bereavement and depression and bereavement and depression and bereavement and depression and bereavement and depression. I have been waiting because I simply don’t have the emotional energy to help him. I have been playing death games for seven years and I’m simply fed up. And that’s the naked truth. I have been waiting because familial love can be fierce and it prevents me from abandoning him. And that’s also the naked truth.

The two feelings co-exist. It is possible to love someone fiercely and still desperately want to be freed of their love. In a parent-child relationship, it is possible to love someone fiercely and naturally and still feel like you are obliged to love them. It is possible to experience these emotions together, at the same time and for a sustained period of time, over several days, over several months, over several years. It is possible to go crazy. It is possible to not.