A Burden of Love

Upon hearing the word “burden,” what does it mean to you?  One tends to think of burdens in a totally negative way.  But this does not need to be so.  There are many definitions and ways to perceive our burdens.

When one has children, as babies, we carry them around and they become heavy, a load so to speak.  That is a burden, by definition, as one of the many meanings of this word.  Another synonym is responsibility.  That is just part of taking care of one’s family and being a responsible adult.  Whether this is a burden or not has to do with the attitude of the adult(s) who have this responsibility.

I will never forget the time when my mother had to move to my brother’s house after a serious fall.  After that happened she could not have stayed at home. She would not have been able to maneuver her walker into the bathroom because of the way the cabinets were designed there. We were going to be with her either way, but couldn’t ensure her safety there.  She wanted to be independent at home, but it just wasn’t a good idea.  After being in the hospital for 10 days over Christmas, she moved into his home which was a large ranch and she could walk easily anywhere she chose.  My sister-in-law had the room ready for her before she left the hospital.

After we moved her in, a service was provided that brought an occupational therapist, a physical therapist and their supervisor for rehabilitation.  As the supervisor was talking to her, my mom said, “I just don’t want to be a burden.”  To which the woman replied, something like, “Of course we are all burdens to our families in one way or another.”  I think she was trying to say that it was just part of life and that it was my brother’s and my responsibility to take care of her now.  And we were so very happy that we could be there for her.  It gave me a different perspective to this word I had never thought about before.  My brother, sister-in-law and I never even considered the fact that she could be a burden at all.  We were happy to be able to be there for her as she had always been for us.

The fact is, that there are different kinds of burdens, both negative and positive.  It all has to do with the attitude and perception each individual has about each one.  If caring for my mother was to be called a burden, then the only way to describe it would be a burden of love.  And that is a burden I gladly bear for those whom I love, especially for my mother who bore me into this world. 

I seem to always have a serious case of clutter in my head.  Why is clearing one’s mind so difficult to achieve?  Do you have this problem, even just a little bit?  I’d hate to be alone in this situation.  But I don’t think I am the only one.  If anything, I think many people are in the same boat.

Age probably has something to do with it.  Maybe not, but it’s an easy excuse, and a handy one as we get older.  Another thing about getting older that could contribute to the mind-clutter is the fact that there is an accumulation of useless information that we pick up over the years.  If only we could defrag our brains.  But that would have its problems too.  What if it took out the wrong things?

I know that meditation would help.  But clearing one’s mind is the first step, the most difficult step.  That’s the problem.  Every time I begin to try to meditate, all kinds of things pop into my mind vying for their voice to be heard.  I wonder if there is a technique that I could learn.  If only I had a clear idea of what steps to take, and maybe a tutor!

A support group might be helpful!  But then again, it could make things worse.  One could pick up on new things to clutter one’s brain. Then again, even though commiserating might not help to solve the problem, it could make a person feel less alone with this issue.

My husband just shared that he sometimes just closes his eyes and looks up with them closed.  I will have to try that.

Vacations are definitely a good thing.  Even a weekend away could  be enough to help a little bit.  Just getting away from one’s daily environment can give a person a break from thinking so much.  Thinking too much is definitely not helpful.

Sometimes, I have found that counting my blessings can clear away some of my negative thinking. At least it is a way to lift one’s spirits.  I guess the only way to be successful at clearing one’s mind, is to try all of these techniques and practice the ones that help even a little bit. By trying them out and finding the ones that work the best, perhaps one can eventually discover enough ways to diminish the thoughts and voices in one’s head.  All a person can do is try.

“Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound.”  Such a beautiful song! But the word grace, itself, also has many wonderful synonyms and they overwhelm me.  There are 3 definitions of the word as a noun and 1 definition as a verb. 

The first definition of the noun is “an act of kind assistance.”  The second is “dignified or restrained beauty of form, appearance or style.”  And the third definition is “ a quality that gives something special worth.”  As a verb, it means  ‘to make something more attractive by adding something that is beautiful or becoming.”

It’s the nouns that attract me because they are specific attributes of grace.  Kindness, beauty and worth are all lovely attributes to incorporate into our daily lives.  And we can do this quite easily if we just count our blessings and share them with others.  By doing this, we can become full of grace because to give grace is to receive it as well.

As the song lyrics express, grace saves us.  Grace finds us and helps us to acknowledge it, thereby helping us to see the truth in our lives.  Isn’t that amazing?  What a wonderful opportunity to put grace into the lives of others and ourselves!  For if this were not possible, hope would be so greatly diminished.  

Grace is something that becomes a verb when we take its attributes and share them with others.  In this way we can spread this goodness into our world.  When we learn to see the grace in our daily lives, we become more grateful.  Being grateful is not just good for oneself, but for those around us.  Grace then becomes a fabulous gift to our world.  For indeed, it is just that, a gift, to be given again and again.  Amen to that!  And may it be so!

The first time I even heard the word “perseveration” was when I was working with a developmentally disabled client.  I had worked in jobs with people who had various disabilities.  The person I was working with was deaf.  The definition of the word perseveration is: “the uncontrollable repetition of a particular response, such as a word, phrase or gesture, despite the absence or cessation of a stimulus.”

My client, since she was deaf, would sign the same thing over and over again, even after my response was given.  It would continue like this for my whole shift.  Of course she couldn’t help it, but I needed this behavior to be adjusted (lessened) or I was going to go crazy.  Needless to say, this was quite an undertaking!  It didn’t go well at first, because she had always done this and it had not been curbed in any way.

One of the things that had to end was for her to stop poking me in the arm every time I was not looking directly at her.  I developed tiny bruises from this behavior.  It didn’t rile me in any way.  She couldn’t help it.  But it was upsetting.  I just had to come up with a way of handling it, for my sanity and her benefit.

Part of the reason she did it so often, was that no one had successfully tried to change it.  She had been allowed to continue, probably because she had been with people who didn’t communicate with her very much.  Sign language was not required to work with her, as it should have been.

I was assigned to work with new staff and teach them as much vocabulary that I could while they shadowed me.

In time she had staff who understood her better, and although the behavior didn’t stop completely, it improved substantially as time passed.  Something I learned from this experience was that patience and persistence are valuable character traits that should be cultivated and applied in daily life.  Not only do they increase our abilities to learn, but they make us kinder and increase our capacity to empathize with others.

Dealing with perseveration taught me these things.  And I am grateful.

Remember when you were a child and your mom or dad would read you a story?  I loved hearing stories.  Still do.  Storytelling is for all ages and in many different forms.  It has a role to play in our lives from the time we are born until we breathe our last breath.

Beginning up to 10 weeks before birth, there is evidence that babies pay attention to the sound of the mother’s voice.  This can set the stage for reading stories to infants, because studies have shown that babies who are talked to and read to, develop language much quicker.  Not only is a strong bond being formed by this interaction, but a vocabulary is in the beginning stage of being formed.

Reading storybooks to children helps to get them ready for school. The older one gets, the desire to read will affect our ability to learn concepts, develop interests, and succeed in our endeavors.

Storytelling is the way we communicate history, oral histories passed down in many cultures throughout the world and the stories in our own families, sharing memories of the people who have passed and of new ones being created.  I love telling stories of my childhood to my grandchildren.  It is a way of knitting us closer together.

History books, biographies, auto biographies, novels, all have the ability to connect us in different ways.  Hearing, reading and telling stories of the past teach us so many things if we are willing to learn from them.  Sharing the stories of my life, verbally and written has been a way for me to process experiences, both positive and negative.

Storytelling is a profession as in the daily newscaster, a comedian’s monologue, a librarian reading to children, and in the writers of fiction in a novel.  Ministers of all faiths communicate to their congregations through the stories of their holy texts.

There is value in knowing many stories in our lives, for what they can teach us, how they can entertain us, and how they can draw us closer together with our families and friends.  Storytelling, in short, can be a thread that stitches us together in understanding each other, if only we choose to see it that way.