No Saints around Here: A Caregiver’s Days

Smiling under Water

78 SMILING UNDER WATER May 1 Today I am thinking how hard it is to be a good Buddhist. I haven’t previously aspired to this—my aspirations these days are quite low, perhaps cooking a tender pot roast or riding my bicycle up a moderate hill without puffing—but I recently decided to try to follow Thich Nhat Hanh’s precepts to bring more peace into my life. In his book Present Moment, Wonderful Moment, he makes this transformation sound so simple. He divides the day into ordinary activities, such as waking up, getting out of bed, and walking. For each activity, he has created a four-line poem, or “gatha.” I am supposed to learn and then recite, mindfully, every gatha at the appropriate time. I haven’t been able to get past the first poem yet. It is not difficult to understand. “Waking up this morning, I smile. / Twentyfour brand-new hours are before me. / I vow to live fully in each moment / and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.” I can recite the last two lines without irony. I wish I could always concentrate on the moment. I want to live as a compassionate being. Even if I mostly fail, try again, and fail once more, I know I am meant to keep trying, like coming up for air. But I am stuck on the first two lines. Take the early morn- smiling under water 79 ing smile. I practiced this (when I remembered) last week, feeling rather foolish, but nonetheless hoping it might affect how I approached my day. I have to admit that my smile felt artificial, a temporary fix of cosmetic surgery. But this morning a smile was not possible. I couldn’t even imagine a smile. James and I had arrived yesterday for a weekend at our cottage in the woods. Because of a treacherously icy winter, I have not been able to bring him here since last fall. The change from his usual environment, even to this familiar one, may have distressed him. At 2:00 a.m., James rang his bell for me. He needed to use the toilet. Fine. I’m here to do that. Glad to help. That’s my job. At 2:25, he rang again. He wanted a drink of water. Well, yeah. Okay. But at 2:45 a.m., 3:30 a.m., 3:45 a.m., 4:30 a.m., on and on until 8:00 a.m., he had increasingly less coherent reasons for calling or ringing his bell. Sometimes he had no reasons at all. Unpredictable Parkie can play havoc with his mind at night. It certainly plays havoc with mine. I’d bet most caregivers don’t need a congressional investigation to know that having one’s sleep constantly interrupted—finally falling back to sleep, only to be awoken once again, sinking back into the bed, jerking awake, again and again—is excruciating. One night is bad enough. Ten days of it, and I’d confess to anything. When I gave up the fight for sleep at 8:00 a.m., helped James out of bed, and started to fix breakfast, I could barely bring myself to be civil. Poor James; it wasn’t his fault. I was so tired that I was shaking. I was sinking again. Down, down, back under the water. Smile? Now for the second line of the gatha: “Twenty-four brandnew hours are before me.” Yes, I know. Life is very short, and as I age, my life is even shorter. I do not want to let those hours slip away. I want to pay attention to their possibilities. But I soon learned what lay before me. Not long after breakfast , that day’s aide, a sweet young woman from a nearby small smiling under water 80 town, arrived with the news she could only stay an hour. She had a last-minute job interview, an important one, and I agreed she had to go. When James doesn’t sleep at night, he does not make up his loss during the following day. He becomes jumpy, confused, even filled with nervous energy. He can sustain interest in a book, a CD, or any other amusement for only twenty minutes at a time. He wants to keep moving. On the second day, he is apt to take naps. But not on the...