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October 21, 2017

155 Big Green Pen Minutes Day Twenty-One: Give

I am participating in the 31 Days of Free Writes October challenge. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. (Confession: I *may* not be able to resist spell-checking!)

Today’s prompt: Give

This exchange was extremely typical while Dad lived with us:

Him: Will you get me a [insert name of item, let’s say coffee]?

Me: Give me just a minute.

Him: Oh forget it then.

You would think over three years i would have anticipated how these conversations would go and either a) adjusted my approach or b) learned to modulate my frustration about them.

I’m not beating myself up about this (much) but hoping (I suppose) that if you’re in this position with an elder (or anyone with a brain impairment) in your life, you figure it out sooner than I did.

The irony was never lost on me that a man who seemingly had ALL the time in the world (from the perspective of his daily schedule — he almost always had literally nothing on his agenda for the day except for watching more tennis) …….. didn’t have the cognitive ability to wait for even the briefest period of time.

And then there was me in contrast: always trying to fit in one more moment of work (I work from home) or one of the kazillion things I am always doing because I either have to or want to.

The other irony? On a bigger perspective, he didn’t have all the time in the world. He was 85 when he came to our home (already suffering from the short-term memory issues due to  mini-strokes (and I always say — there’s nothing very “mini” about any stroke)) at 85 and had two bouts of cancer while he was here, one of them ultimately ending his life.

We often demand to be given time — we demand that of ourselves, of God, of others.

Maybe the biggest gift we can give ourselves is a different perspective about it all.

Writing Challenge

Paula Kiger

Wife of one, Mom of two, Friend of many. My pronouns are she/her/hers.

Filed Under: Reflections

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