Is that Baloney or Salami?

Squished in the middle - the "Sandwich" Generation. I've known that this was my role, my stage in life, for quite a few years. My mother-in-law lives in a near-by nursing home, completely debilitated by advanced MS, separated from her (second) husband in another state and who is unable to physically or emotionally care for her because of his own ill health. My father-in-law is desperately caring for his wife, who is bedridden and probably dying from her failing health, increasing dementia, and bad hospital and nursing home experiences of the last year.

And now my family. My father has had emphysema for over 15 years (if you smoke - stop now!). He recently spent 12 days in the hospital with pneumonia, and a week ago I went down to my parents' house (a 6 hour drive) to help my mom bring my dad home from the hospital. Only this time, it wasn't like any of our past experiences - my dad came home from the hospital so weak that he wasn't able to care for himself at all. My dad is a fairly large man (though he has lost a lot of weight in the last few years), and fairly crippled in the hips and legs. Within 2 hours of coming home from the hospital, he fell down while trying to go to the bathroom and we had to call the fire department to help us get him up and into bed.

Life shifted into a new stage for my parents and I at that moment. We struggled with panic and fear at how my parents could cope with my dad's disability, with how to even get through the next day. My mom does not have the strength to provide the care that my dad needed, so it fell to me to care for my dad in ways that I never, ever expected to. It was very hard, for all of us.

After a few days we were able to arrange for 24-hour assistance to come help my mother (which was something my mother had not believed would be available to them in the small town that they live in). I stayed for another day after the care-giver arrived, just to be sure it would work out, and to take my mom out to lunch before I left. Then yesterday I drove the 6 hours back home - which was really a peaceful time, rocking out in the car by myself to Sting's "Sacred Love" and Dave Matthews Band "Live at the Gorge", interspersed with a couple of hours of an audiobook version of a PD James novel.

It was so wonderful to come home to my husband and children, to sleeping in my own bed, to holding the kitty in my lap. My husband was able to handle all the parenting duties for a week (another one of the benefits of being layed-off, and having a two-parent stay-at-home family). The girls missed me, but only barely - they had so much fun with their dad!

This lunch-meat role is a hard, hard thing. Sometimes I feel pressed-in on all sides - this is a hard way to be refined, a hard way to grow up. This week it felt like the only thing that held me together was the memory of an emotional transition that Real Live Preacher described in an essay that I recently re-read. In the essay called Crocodile Hunter, RLP describes (I'm paraphrasing) making the transition from denial ("There is no way that I can do this") to acceptance ("Of course I can do this, what else is there to do?"), in a somewhat similar situation to what I went through. His words were life-giving to me this week.

So I'm glad to be home. Glad my parents are doing better - my mom has help and my dad is getting a little stronger. Glad that the lunch meat doesn't sit alone in the sandwich - there's some cheese (my husband), some lettuce (my friends, great words from RLP), a bit of mustard (my faith)...