Having just spent 14 days at my new job as a live-in carer, supporting a lady aged 94, whose earlier life would have been similar to mine, what I saw of the everyday normal was a great wake-up call for me.
This lady had been very active, had five children – three of them under three years old and was very houseproud. I’ve spent these days sharing her life and in great observation. This lady is very anxious. For example, the TV would not ‘work’ one night, despite trying all the usual ‘techy’ tricks to get it to respond. One minute we were watching a programme, next minute it was silent. The lady was beside herself, as if this was a life-threatening situation. It was seven o’clock at night, nevertheless, she phoned the son that lived nearby to come round and fix it. She could not cope at all with something that had not been expected. She ‘broke down’ in response to a breakdown of what is ‘normal’ life to her.
As the first week went on, I realised that everything in her life is about distraction: making cups of tea, having a fully cooked meal in the middle of the day, being negative and controlling of others, inspecting the premises for ‘mistakes’ I may have made and things being outside of her perfect customary order. While the TV is emitting its unrelenting false light, I look around the room at the utility furniture, pendulum chiming clocks, coffee tables with the required box of tissues for convenience, standard lamp, shelves filled with ornaments and keepsakes to remind us of people and times we knew, to keep us feeling secure that nothing changes and we are ok, we have a life. The playing of dominoes, another cup of tea. Everything invented to keep us comfortable and in distraction. An invented ‘reality’.
In my married and parenting days I would have been very much like this lady, so what was happening here was a reflection of how life was for me too. It was only about four years ago (I am currently 74 years old) that I was given the realisation that I had actually lived all my life with a low level anxiety. This was delivered to me by a concerned person. If it had not been, I probably would still be unaware of this effect on my body. After working with this lady, I realised that I too, like her, had also lived with a low-level depression, a tension that held me in sadness about what had been done to me ‘by others’ and a given-upness in the despair that I could not now control them, despite any explosive drama I chose to cause in their midst.
Having realised some years ago the responsibility of my part in trying to control others and feeling sad about what my life could have been like and however much I felt that I had never suffered depression, it took the experience of working with this lady for me to admit that I had suffered depression and to really nominate that feeling and allow it to clear. I observed her suffering and realised I had allowed this in myself for years: the perfect dampener to take up space in my life where joy and vitality could have been.
The tremendous anxiety and reaction to change which is already affecting her health, as little by little she succumbs to the customary lack of mobility, the imbalance and un-fitness and mild dementia deemed to be part of, and inevitably ours, in old age. The sadness she feels that she cannot control everything and everyone, a given-upness that life is not how she wants it, the desired reward not forthcoming for all the work and investment in her children made through the years. This lady has a very close family who are very loving and attentive, but who are well aware that her unsettlement can result in the full force of her anger, and the entrapment of being caught in all that too.
This placement has been confirming for me that undeniably, the ‘life is ok, it is not that bad’, the ‘everything is alright really – I’ve done well,’ is not it. I made the usual ‘achievements’, got married, bore children, got divorced, Masters degree, got good jobs, own house and car etc. and what was all that for? For nothing better to do. Along with that, life was an effort in keeping it up. Keeping everything the same, controlling, calculating, and balancing every angle to stay on my chosen perch, and silently suffering a low-level anxiety in case I should fail to do that.
I further realise how deep low-level anxiety goes into the body and that I am now being called to a life of settlement and joy, as I displace more and more of the attachment to sadness and effort of trying to control life.