Poignance

Each time I take my circular exercise walks around the halls of all the different hospitals I've been in, I take my music with me. Tonight, the first songs that came on were love songs. "You Got the Love" by Florence and the Machine, and then "Nothing's Real but Love", by Rebecca Ferguson.  

Sometimes I can't help peaking in on the rooms that have their doors ajar, or door shades open. Tonight, with tears in my eyes, I saw so much of that love. Caretakers, family, lovers, friends, sitting next to their loved ones. Wearing masks to protect them.  Tucking blankets around their chilly feet, redirecting vaporizers (this is mostly a lung floor), brushing back stray hairs. They'd take encouraging gentle walks pushing wheeled poles laden with saline, chemo, anti-fungals, anti-virals. 

I know everyone thinks it's harder for the person who is sick. And I'm sure it's true in most ways. But this poignant marriage of worry and love is palpable in all the people who live through and support the paths of those close to them who are ill. 

If you're sick, your only job is to get better, (that's what people tell you and want you to do).  But caretakers here kiss their spouses, partners, friends, lovers, mommies, daddies, goodnight and then go home and sleep alone. Or they go home to be both mommy and daddy to their kids, trying to make them laugh and feel safe. They do all the bills, eat what they can, cry when they can, make sense of suffering, and try like hell to take care of themselves so they can be everything to everybody while their loved one heals, or not.