Hellp!!
My environment had known it for some time. My wife, a caregiver, would not be able to take care of me for six weeks. She would also stay elsewhere for fourteen days.
I fantasized about the freedoms I thought I would get. Here and there I bragged about it.
Now, as I write this, she has not been available as a caregiver for a week.
Nothing of my fantasy has come true yet, on the contrary.
I see poorly. According to the WHO guidelines, I am socially blind.
I receive help from three different care providers. One is a bit more flexible than the other.
They are all involved and caring. However, their deployment is limited in time and must be planned in advance.
Unfortunately, I can’t always plan everything in advance. Like for example when I drop a pill on the floor. My caregiver is very flexible and in my case available 24 hours.
It is written and said that you have to appeal to your loved ones and neighbors.
My loved ones do not reside in the Netherlands. I can call on some good friends. They helped me excellently when I asked for it, thanks to them anyway.
I was afraid to ask them. It felt to me like I had to cross a very high mountain. It will certainly not have been experienced by them that way, but I unexpectedly disrupted their lives and their routine with my problem.
My neighbors live their own lives, we are not family, and in a way strangers to each other.
The question arises ‘Good neighbourliness’: what is that exactly?
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‘Good neighborliness’ is often mentioned in advice and memos.
I now understand the expression even better; Better a good neighbor than a distant friend.
Living without support feels very lonely to me.
I now think that I can empathize and understand the feelings of a caregiver who has no support even better.
Theoretically, it all seems logical and easy. You can appeal to your social environment.
In my perspective, that is the theory, not the common practice.
Gradually, I discover even more the loss of my caregiver.
My caregiver was there for me 24 hours a day.
Sometimes it’s small things that I have to do now. Only many small things become a mountain.
Climbing that mountain is difficult.
I sometimes compare it to policymakers who fly over Mount Everest in an airplane and look at the mountain. It is then relatively small and easy to climb.
However, ask the opinion of those few mountaineers approaching the summit.
They think completely differently. They may remember the corpses of the mountaineers who, on their way to the top, died on the mountain.
This column is a long story with a short message: Long live the caregivers. Cherish them.
The column would not have appeared in this form without my caregiver. My caregiver is an auditor and advisor.
