Threshold

Last night I took a small break from the lockdown and social isolation and met my friend George, and instead of our customary beer run at the pub, we happily settled for a nightly stroll around town. It was good to be outside. The light drizzle and the slight chill made the night colourful. Yellow from the street lights and cloudy white from our warm breaths.

It had been a while since I last saw George and we had a lot of catching up to do. And that was what we did, with seriousness, with fun, with honesty, with joy, with sincerity. We talked about work, about life, about our homes, here and abroad, about sports, about politics, about our children, about our wives, about cars. We even talked about the stars. A couple of hours later, feeling a bit cold and a bit tired from standing up all this time, we called it a night, promising another night out soon and started to get back.

I walked the few final yards home, feeling happy that I saw my friend and felt a bit normal with the familiarity of hanging around with someone. Playing back our conversation I remembered something that George said, and realised the size of that truth. He said that women maintain their playfulness, their likeness to flirt, their enthusiastic fun, just like little when they were girls, just like our wives were. But after they cross the threshold of becoming someone’s nurse, they lose their girl-like characteristics, and they become older, more serious, less playful. That crossing changes them forever into something they cannot escape and cannot go back. His statement was one of worry and concern about his dear wife and not to criticise or complain, so let’s take a minute to think and understand how true this really might be.

My mind travelled back in time, further back from my lifetime, and remembered the stories and experiences of the women in my family, the women I lived with all my life. My mother, my sister, my aunts, my cousins, my wife, her mother. They all started as young girls innocent and sweet, some of them with good childhood years, full of dreams, and they had happy-go-lucky stories and photographs to show for it. They were enjoying life with friends and relatives, and they were smiling with the certainty, ignorance and arrogance of a life ahead of them. And then life moved on. The people in the photographs became older, some became sick, some passed away. Life moved on and those that were in need reached out to those that could for help and support. Life moved on and the young shared their youth with those in need and sacrificed it to keep them alive and well. But life always moves on and the older leave this world, sometimes early and sometimes on time, but either way they take with them the youth that they were given and leave their carers drained and scarred. Life moves on and that experience changes us. Forever.

My mother became a mother-of-two and took care of her home but then she had to nurse and eventually lose her own mother. Then she had to nurse and lose her two brothers, and although she kept caring for her own family, the flair in her eye was lost.

My sister was always a laughing and smiling girl, a young woman, a young wife, and a mother. After we cared and lost our mother, the smile became a little smaller, it became a little slower. Our carelessness was sacrificed and lost forever.

Our friend, let's call her Joy, has always been a carefree butterfly, that was flirting her youth away and was enjoying the perks of being pretty. When her son presented development issues her life changed forever. She lost the joy and fun, she found depression and sadness, and when she crossed that line, she was unable to ever go back. She is always caring for her son and she does so many things for his future and happiness. But I often wonder what may be going on in her mind as she sips her coffee looking at him from a distance. The sadness is always there.

My wife Yiota has always been a positive and optimistic person that has been supporting those in need or those that have been facing difficulties. Following years of battling with her mother’s illness and her sudden but inevitable loss, she feels a little more distant to that optimistic girl, and feels more in need of support herself.

My cousins spent almost their entire life taking care of their family. From their father, their brother and now their mother and a husband, they have been carers and nurses for almost forty years. Their life decisions were based on their family needs and their every day lives has been adjusted to cater the people that depend on them. Their childhood was short and their experiences limited. Eventually they managed to find salvation in God and religion and that is where they find answers, guidance and strength.

So many similar stories to remember, and all with the same progression. Taking care of someone for a long time is exhausting. Requires physical strength to stay next to that person for days and weeks and months. Requires mental endurance to be present and sane for every demand of everyday life. Requires spirituality to stay on the path, to keep moving forward and even to make sense of things. The responsibility of someone’s well being or even their life, is a heavy load to carry around. The effort to stay calm and inspire optimism is exhausting. The open ended “why” questions are increasing and they are aimed at God to answer, but usually without success.

Nursing for someone is a threshold. A doorway. A doorway for both men and women. The scars from the effort and the emotional charge are so intense that they become permanent. They have such strength that their signature in our soul reflects all the way to our face. Crossing that doorway has no return. One cannot un-live that experience, or un-feel the agony and the pain, or un-see the imploring eyes of a loved one in agony and pain. No, there is no return from that.

So, George was spot on. The girls we flirted with, we laughed with, we took on careless holidays, we had children with, suddenly they cannot go back to the place and time of innocence. The scars of life are now visible and permanent and they have their own history. They need to be carried into the future, changing the lives of our girls forever. The girls have now become women. I am certain I am not the same person either.

So what if the person I love is no longer a young girl? She is still the person I loved and shared my life with. She is the person that got slapped in the face by life and kept moving forward. What if the smile is slower and the eye gets lost into space? I am also a passenger in that same journey and my scars are equally deep. We are alike, like two soldiers that are comparing battle wounds. I am glad that my wife is now a middle aged woman and not a young girl, I am happy that she experienced the joy and the pain of life and now she has the scars to prove it. It means a lot for a person to be able to look back and count the battles fought and the battles lost.

The final and most significant threshold we need to cross, is nursing ourselves. It is the one that brings peace and understanding. It is an esoteric process where one must let go of the past and embrace the future, as a new person that has been sculpted by life and time. Nursing our own selves is the healing process that will not make us young boys or young girls but it will bring us closure and may make us smile again. It will bring us back to living today, with the ability and joy of remembering our past, without inviting the painful ghosts and the darkness of that time. It will simply let us sleep at night, and rest.