I'm a "carer" now

“Into the Woods”, another Sondheim masterpiece, features a Narrator whose function at first is to hold together the different strands of fairytale from which the show’s plot is woven.  Act 2, famously, focuses on what happens after “happy ever after”.  Things fall apart.  The Giant, killed by Jack as the beanstalk is felled, has an angry widow who has descended to earth and seeks revenge.  In desperation, the surviving members of the cast look for a sacrificial victim to placate her and they “volunteer” the narrator for this role.  It’s to no avail; she won’t be satisfied until she’s taken Jack’s life in return for her husband’s.  But now the story has to find its own way: the narrator is no more.

For my Dad, it’s as if his narrator has died too.  That sense we all have of: here’s another day, what are the tasks that face us, where’s my “to do” list – has now vanished.  Life for him is one thing after another, a task to begin but then be distracted from so it doesn’t get finished, but you don’t remember starting it so you’re not aware it needs to BE finished.  Someone else needs to tell the story for him; and that person, for the time being, will have to be me.

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I live 2½ hours’ drive from Dad.  I’m the only child and there are no other close relatives; nonetheless, with phone calls and weekend visits where I can, I have to make sure his care is in place, talk to his doctors, social services, housing advisers, and so on.  So that makes me – and Akela confirmed this – a “carer”.  I meet the criteria, so it’s official.  Whoo, boundary problems.  I’m a chaplain, not a patient.  I work with patients, I work with staff – as colleagues, that’s OK – and with carers.  But now I am a carer.  I need information, I need support, I need others in my situation to share my feelings with.  D-day has hung a new sign on me and it’s still itching round my neck, it’s not a status I feel I can do justice to at such a distance, but so God help me I’ll do my best.

Whatever that means, but watch this space for some theological reflection on where I am in all this.