So you've received some purported tragic news regarding the one you love. Maybe it is a life-threatening illness. Perhaps it is a pending condition. Is there anything you can do in anticipation of the tragedy?

Assume your opportunities to give care will be limited. How can you make the most of the time you've got left?

Be hopeful and share a positive spirit. If the boat is sinking and you're all going to drown anyway, might as well have fun dressing up in the life preservers.

In other words, do everything you can to improve the chance this will be perceived as a loving response. Sure some things are final, irreversible, and permanent. But other acts either add or detract from situations. For example, show your loved one a new face of your caring. Open up. Be daring.

Think of life as an impromptu performance. No rehearsals. No second chance to get it right. Do your best and know you did your best when it is time to move on.

A loser has a difficult title to bear. Most likely they have suffered loss, encountered overwhelming obstacles, and met failures.

We are all losers. If we have not lost something or someone of value, we have not lived. If we have not set goals to overcome adversity, we have not lived. If we have never failed, we have not tried.

Anyone can be a winner. It takes real strength to pick yourself back up after all the pieces are broken.

Become a better caregiver.

• A caregiver is sensitive to others and to the value of life. Caregivers learn the importance of rising above--not masking--their feelings. The caregiving man must enlarge his comfort zone, placing his own needs for validation into the ever changing queue of reprioritized needs for action.

• Caregiving is a lot like selecting the proper sandpaper grit for a job. Too fine and you manage only to become abrasive without accomplishing any real progress; too coarse and you eat away the very shape you hoped to attain.

• Giving care is a choice and not an obligation but a blessing. Choosing to not give care is a curse and not a crime but a loss.

• Caregiving begins with awareness. Everyone can develop new reasons for receiving care. Anyone can become a better caregiver.
  

Support the ones who support others.

Every once in a while someone among us says, "My God, we can do better than that." Don't be "that" person. Be the one who acts with conviction about doing the right thing.

What makes caregiving rewarding? I'll tell you what makes caregiving rewarding. It's knowing you give something for someone else.

Emotional awareness is that part of us that says "this sucks" but goes ahead and does the right thing. The easiest thing to do would be run away and hide, pretend it's someone's responsibility (besides your own), check out, log off, cut losses, and give up.

Emotional awareness can arrive anytime. Perhaps you finally "get it" after an innocence is lost or a loved one fails.

Emotional awareness seeks ending a feud with God. "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth...", the law, and other meters of justice obstruct the personal investment it takes to bring peace; emotional awareness removes impediments to caregiving.

It's never going to get any better if we aren't willing to try something different.

The best that we can offer you is the realization we are not alone. We can't take everything back, undo anything, or make something go away.

Perhaps you have already realized your destiny and you just want some companionship. Nobody can make somebody "be there" for you.

You may ask, "What's your point?" MLBerg's Caregiver blog is just that: a point in time and space. We are pilgrims on a journey, starting from different locations and headed to different places. All travelers must pass through the reality of giving care.

You have not begun to consider everything that might upset the apple cart.

Best to visualize using your resources and energy to become a better caregiver.

It's been a long time since I've recognized any news as "good." I feel worthless.

Everything seems useless when it comes to helping our present situation.

Why try to get up? They only want to beat you back down.

Hang in there.

Has everyone heard the line "One Aw sh** is worth ten Attaboys" or does this need explanation? The meaning of this saying is "don't screw up because a mistake will negate all (in this case, ten) your good works." Everyone makes mistakes. Rules like these do not incentivize a person to do more good deeds after failure (maybe if the ratio were one mistake to three or four accomplishments it would be different). Regardless track records are like entitlement attitudes: made to be broken.

A caregiver learns to pick himself up after a fall. Keep trying. Don't miss the opportunity to learn from your mistakes. Help others.

No help
Or rather, no bail out
No entitlement
Tough love: no fair!
It defines justice as "lots of compassion and blind faith" with limits on generosity.

Damn it. Why not "mercy and lots of blind compassion, but selfishness not allowed."

Feed me. Clothe me. Nourish me. Guide me.

Creation of independence causes caregiving to become a choice and not an obligation.

Two years is a long time to exist in pain.

Two years is long enough to finish all the things which were procrastinated.

Two years is an exercise in hurry up and wait.

It is hard to say who I'll be in two years.

It occurs to me what the hold up might be. Generally a CMfM is written in foreign language. It only appears intelligible to the common man.

I preserved the timbre of my most desperate journal entries to present insights into the cancer experience from my caregiving perspective. The journey is made alone but we choose our allys.

The CMfM is not compiled for a specific audience, ie I tried to create a communication tool with mine so that it effectively displayed commitment of personal sacrifice at the most critical time: early, unplanned, unprepared, now.

Those women newly diagnosed with serious illnesses may find a voice in the manual and can (as simply as) point to examples with the suggestion "Honey, please just try to do something like (that)?" We solicit more examples of how to become better caregivers.

Is there value in this? Obviously not all shared visions mesh. Support the man who tries to be a companion for a patient. This will help both the caregiver and the care receiver. If this belief is from la-la-land, so be it. It's not literature. Nor is it technobabble about cancer research. It's not a pie-in-the-sky "magic cure" for anyone who is willing to follow guidelines to the T.

Essentially you must intend to care.

Give whatever care you can. ****Career advice*****

(Dear,)

 

I  love you. I know you have endured a tremendous amount of hardship because of me. I'm sorry I was so weak and immature.

 

You have my promise: I am changng and (it) will be better.

 

Love,

 

(Me)

1. Fill in the blanks
2. Change