It is always poetry that I go back to, go back to because it is always there, an only constant. Here’s an excerpt of one of the most beautiful poems I know that addresses caregiving, true, but really everything. Because caregiving is, actually, about everything. It’s a very long poem, the final poem in a collection of beautiful poems. If you have the chance, buy or borrow the book and read the poem in its entirety as it’s laid out on the page. Here’s a link to do so.
from the poem “Our Andromeda” by Brenda Shaughnessy, Our Andromeda, Copper Canyon Press, 2012
You might be surprised to hear that illness occurs on Andromeda. That the field of medicine is still a necessary patch of land. Did you think I was telling you a fairy tale, Cal? Trying to get some religious parables into your already impassioned childhood and indoctrinate you toward the obligations of heaven? I am not. People still get sick in Andromeda, and woe and death and grief arrive each day like packets of mail through a slot in the door. How could it be otherwise? It is life, after all. And despite what the religious on Earth try to prove, no one can choose life. We can only choose choices. People get sick in Andromeda The difference is that people taking care of the sick don't pretend they know what they do not and cannot know. In Andromeda, everybody knows what they need to know. Even doctors, even patients. Even, yes, insurance companies that don't even use the word "claim," certainly not in the form of a form, in their business, because it's just rude and heartless to hurt further a hurt person by making them shout in the wind, wondering whether their pain will be approved, deemed real, awarded validation in the form of not bankrupting the sufferer instantly with avalanching bills. They know that there. We don't even need to pack our bags, Cal. I can't be sure but how much you want to bet they have better bags, too?
Thank you for sharing this poem. I had not read it before, but now it has planted itself deep in consciousness. I am glad you have poetry.
I read the whole poem, it made me cry. Heartbreakingly true and filled with love. Thank you for showing it to me.