It started when I was very young. Both my parents were musicians. When Mom went to choir practice, Dad played records for my brother and me. The “Largo al factotum” was very big on the dad playlist, and we were good at the Figaros. “Peter and the Wolf” was regularly featured. Listening was the game. My ears had a sharp growth spurt.
In kindergarten, I started piano lessons. In sixth grade, organ. Listening stretched from two hands on eighty-eight keys to both feet, manuals, stops, foot pedals. My ears grew muscular.
Piano study continued for about sixteen years, and my ears became Olympian in stature.
One day I discovered I was alone with Mom’s cancer and Dad’s dementia. And I also discovered that most other people did not have ears. They could not — or would not — hear about caregiving.
Meanwhile, I heard: the sounds of caregiving built up within me. They were relentless, soulless sounds, from all the rookeries where razor-beaked anxieties bred: hospitals, doctors’ offices, midnight vigils. I was the trapped, the carrion. I couldn’t get away from it. Suffering, dying, fear and sound. Endless sound. Televisions, loudspeakers, tapes, videos, medical machines, floorboards, plumbing in eternal crescendo.
Do you think I exaggerate? Then you don’t know about caregiving.
I didn’t realize until after the deaths how deep the damage. Sound, especially music, suffocated me. I’d have to get away from it, get out so I could breathe. Or I would focus all my energy on not running, unable to concentrate on anything else.
Caregiving had made sound intolerable, and I couldn’t not listen.
I’m better now but not all right. Ears remember.
November 25, 2014 at 5:34 am
Once again, your writing elevates the caregiving experience to the realm of pure literature. Painful yet beautifully evocative descriptions that break one’s heart.
November 25, 2014 at 9:36 am
Thank you, Shirah. There isn’t anything more encouraging you could say. I almost didn’t post this because I wasn’t sure it had relevance. You remind me that one person’s experience is indeed relevant. As a writer I have to believe that.
December 5, 2014 at 2:21 am
This is indeed heartbreaking and relevant. The description of the rookeries is stunning, and disturbing. I can “hear” the cacophony of caregiving loud and clear through your courageous confession. Thank you, Maureen.
December 5, 2014 at 10:10 am
As always, thanks for going there with me.