Why do we take care of the people we love...
...even when what we perceive as their lives threaten to, or actually, overwhelm what we perceive to be our lives?
    Following is a piece of script from a House episode which bluntly frames this question:

One of Dr. House's patients is a man who was diagnosed with a brain tumor, causing general paralysis and an electronic wheelchair bound existence, and whose family has been taking care of him. The man attempts suicide by maneuvering himself, in his wheelchair, into the family's pool. At a point immediately previous to Dr. House suspecting that the man's paralysis is from another cause, a conversation ensues between Dr. House and the woman's husband about her caregiving for her husband. The conversation is as follows:

Woman: So he won't have any pain?
Dr. House: Eventually.
Woman: Thank you.
Dr. House: Everything else will be the same.
Woman: Well, you took away his pain and that, that changes a lot.
Dr. House: Why don't you put him in some sort of facility? Some place without a pool.
Woman: Yeah. I could dump him there, except, he's my husband. He's my son's father.
Dr. House: Right. Kids need a dad. Someone to play catch with, talk about girls.
Woman: Mark's learned that you don't have to abandon someone just because...
Dr. House: ...get a dog.
Woman: I'm taking care of him for the same reason you helped us.
Dr. House: Somebody shot you and you hallucinated?
Woman: I have a responsibility.
Dr. House: So he's just an anchor weighing you and your family down. Sapping your energy. Wasting your life. That's the meaning you take from this.
Woman: I want to take care of him.
Dr. House: You enjoy this.
Woman: I can't abandon him.
Dr. House: So you don't want to take care of him. Taking care of him doesn't fulfill you, make you happy. But, not taking care of him would make you miserable.
Woman: Hmm.

    What I like about this conversation is that it includes the internal Devil's Advocate no caregiver can escape and the problem, itself, why do this, is not resolved. Probably, by now, billions, if not trillions and more, words have been written, by and about caregivers, attempting to answer this question. As with human relationships, there is no easy resolution and, as well, perhaps at least as many eccentric reasons as there are caregivers.
    I remember, in a fairly raunchy mood, once having a conversation with another dedicated caregiver in which we were discussing the emotional immaturity and irresponsibility of a third caregiver. The question of "Why?" was addressed between us. After much wrangling, our best resolution was: "You just do it."
    Not that this is the definitive answer, just as the scripted conversation above, while simultaneously enlightening and troubling, isn't the definitive discussion. But, it reminded me that, when I'm feeling up to it and have the time, it never hurts to question my motives, pose the nasty, as well as the nice assumptions and review, for a moment, why I continue to do this, before I'm again engulfed in the doings of it.
    Later.
- posted by Gail Rae @ 12:47   email  this post