It's not like the experience of caregiving goes away when it ends, and it always ends. No matter that the position has been closed with its exact and delineated daily, weekly, monthly, or “as needed” caregiving tasks, the impact endures. Some post-caregivers grieve exclusively; others are primarily relieved. More often than not grief and relief fit tightly in the same moment. 

Assume nobody wants to hear about the caregiving or the closure of the job description.

I can't recall what question opened the box. We only had a business relationship, a new friendship as kindred spirits, but the situation was safe, the wine was almost gone.  I can't recall the question that opened the box. Most likely I spoke of anticipating Mary's death at home, and a goal of protecting her from the senior care industrial complex, when he said, "I was my father's caregiver. He was on hospice. He died in my arms." Then he visually painted the details about the six months after his father told him of his decision to decline more chemotherapy. He told me how he received burial instructions. He knew without being told that his father chose him and not his older or younger sisters. I saw the scene when he told of how he was called for "the breathing" and arrived when the breathing was the breath of a fleeing spirit and then he painted it again for me: "He died in my arms." 

The tears were right there, but men don't cry, at least not in front of new friends, and neither do they cry 20 year-old tears. So the relief and grief segued into how he was ready to be there again for his mother, because a new position for caregiver with new, unique, specific duties and instructions always becomes available, even when you are not looking for a new job. 

Thyme N. Haff

2012 August thirty