Caregivers as Listeners First of three sample chapters from Midwives of the Spirit: Thoughts on Caregiving, copyright 2002 by Jane Mary Curran. All rights reserved. once upon a time I was born. Long ago or maybe not so long.. I’m eighty years old. I’m forty-two. Once upon a time I was born. in oregon in ohio. I was born into a big family a small family. They love me. They left me. Once upon a time I was born. And once upon a time I will die. In between are the stories. Thousands and thousands of stories about my life, my marriage that worked (or didn’t), my children who love me (or don’t), my work that was successful (or a dismal failure), my time in world war II, in korea, in South Vietnam. I have long rambling stories that give me hints as to who I will become–even with a devastating illness. With the story of my death as the next chapter. There’s the story of how I was raised on a farm and helped my dad milk sixty head of holsteins before I caught the bus for school. There’s the story of my fifth grade teacher who told me I had a gift for drawing when she saw the cartoons I drew in the front of my spelling book. And there’s the story of this quilt I still sleep under when I take a nap. My grandmother made it for me when I went to college. it was the gift she had to give because she couldn’t read at all and could barely write her name. I have so many stories, and I tell them to you so I don’t forget the things I’ve done, the people I’ve known, so I don’t forget who I am. I’m so scared I’m losing myself. That may be the worst part of all: to feel as if I’m losing myself. I don’t want to get lost. I want you to know me. To know who I am. . . . So, people tell their stories again and again, because the stories confirm their existence, confirm that they have walked on the earth, breathed her air, and lived in this world, once upon a time. In the telling people are reminding themselves that somehow it matters that they were born and now are face to face with their mortality, that in some mysterious way their being so sick matters greatly in this experience of being alive. So the stories flow. Some are new. Most are repetitive, told and heard so many times that listeners can almost set clocks by how long it takes to fight again the Battle of the Bulge or to measure the rain on the daughter’s wedding day. And all the while people are spinning together the pieces of their lives into a meaningful fabric. Sometimes the fabric looks a little patchy, and sometimes it looks like an ancient tapestry. But what it looks like and sounds like are far less important than what it feels like to those telling their stories. If telling the stories feels meaningful, then the fabric grows strong and beautiful, regardless of some broken threads. If the stories feel empty and without purpose, the fabric of their inner selves weakens as their bodies decline. One of the privileges of caregiving is to listen to the stories of people spinning their memories into their lives. Yet the kind of attention needed to listen and to hear requires time, time, and more time, the very commodity that seems in least supply when caregivers have so many tasks to do. Often caregivers are so busy trying to meet the enormous physical and medical needs of very sick people that they feel they have no time to sit and “just listen”, as if listening is somehow a waste of valuable time that could be used for more pressing tasks such as doing laundry or cooking a meal. However, some people prefer to talk and be heard over a meal or a bath. Indeed, the process of telling and listening is sometimes preferable to food and is refreshment of a different nature. The importance of telling and listening is evidenced by the insistence, the almost fierce determination of very sick people to be heard and known as they retell their lives. The process of telling the story and being heard feeds the soul, the full humanity of the person whose life is moving toward closure. The inherent challenge for caregivers is to remain free enough that tasks and schedules do not become the only agendas of caregiving. For many the greatest gift they can receive from their caregivers is attentive listening, that availability to “just listen”, to the stories of their lives. And when caregivers listen, they are hearing the lives of people who are facing the ultimate story of challenge and change. Once upon a time I rode horses in Wyoming, in vermont. Once upon a time I sang on stage, lost a baby, wanted to be a doctor. Once upon a time I dreamed about god and woke up crying because the dream was true. Once upon a time I loved someone and was loved in return. Once upon a time . . . .