It is something I’ve never been able to master. This need to do and be (whatever) balanced with the need to care for others and make things right. I am either running around trying to fix things, being the martyr that no one asked me to be or I am working on my projects for months on end. Alone.
It is hard being a Secular Mother Theresa and/or a Spiritual Howard Roark. I don’t advise it.
I found out this afternoon that a very good friend of mine is in the hospital (again) and will probably not make it through. He is 61. This is the same friend I nursed from the beginning to end of his last hospitalization four+ years ago.
I couldn’t do it then, but did. It almost killed me, but I did it. I ended his extended hospitalization and rehabilitation for 4-6 months and dropped everything. I almost lost everything as well.
When he started drinking again it made me sever ties. I couldn’t cope.
And now this. Some part of me, the younger more maternal part, says that I could have stopped this. It tells me that just giving enough will fix things. But I think emotional energy works like scientific energy: It cannot be created or destroyed – it just changes form.
The last time it drained everything I had emotionally, financially, and physically. I am still feeling the effects all these years later. And yet I sit here thinking, thinking, thinking.
He never changed his condo admittance papers, so off I go tonight to find his will and business papers for his sister. I am the only one allowed in the building unattended without a power of attorney.
It reminds me of a story of a distant cousin…
He worked out West for a widow as a ranch hand. This would have been 30+ years ago.
She was a hopeless alcoholic, and as such was too much for him to deal with. He tried, but it got to a point where he just had to go.
As he was leaving, she said: “You may have lost your loyalty, but I WON’T lose mine!”
He thought “sure, whatever” and cut out.
Fast forward 10 years. He gets a notice. He finds out that she has died and left him everything. Every single thing.
Not that I am interested in my friend Greg’s things but there is some part of me that wants some kind of grand movie ending like that. Some part of me that wants to show off how, even though he never stopped drinking, never straightened out his act, never did any of the things I thought he would when he essentially got a second shot at life… that… I don’t know. Validation? Vindication? Admiration? What?
Then the hyper-rational side of me kicks in. It has been my dominant side for the past few years. It tells me that this has all (all of it!) been a lot of effort invested in someone to whom I am not related and with whom I don’t have a romantic connection. A LOT OF EFFORT.
Sigh.
So I’ll go to his condo after class tonight and find the appropriate papers. I’ll think about where I want to go from here. I haven’t been there in two years, so it will be hard to do it, but I will.
