Care/Work #1
Care/Work is my new column for paid subscribers and founding members only. It is the place where I will discuss more personal thoughts and feelings about caregiving, workplace behaviors, books and the publishing industry, and my current studies into TCM.
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I’ve come to the conclusion my mother lives on an endless cycle of nine lives. I know her luck will run out eventually. We all die. But she visits the threshold of death so often yet magically recovers. (My husband says her body is pickled at this point and will never die.) I should be thrilled by this but more and more it feels like a curse.
She has met death at the river so often they are practically friends. They convene the two of them, but she never enters the river. It is as though they are routine visits like your yearly physical. I imagine death and my mother discuss the state of her health. I imagine them discussing me; and then I imagine them reviewing the terms of their agreement–to allow her to live still and not die. Meanwhile, I remain and must witness her descent to the river, unable to follow her where goes, and to witness her return which should be joyous.
However there is a cost. You cannot go to the river and be gifted time and again another round of nine lives without a significant price. The cost of returning means a bit of her essence leaves her each time, and I’m left with parts of a woman I no longer recognize.