Brian Ascalon Roley has received fellowships and awards from the University of Cambridge, Cornell University, the Ohio Arts Council, Djerassi, Ragdale, and the VCCA. He is currently Professor of English at Miami University of Ohio. His poem “Caregiving” appears in the Fall 2019 Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine.
On the face of it, my poem, “Caregiving” would seem to arise out of my and my wife’s experience of raising a wheelchair user son who is growing heavier and the accumulative toll of lifting such weight on the body and mind. But perhaps my poem was actually rooted in childhood observation. For years, my Filipino uncle lived with my family in Los Angeles and took care of his aging mother. He sacrificed so much, in terms of jobs and personal life. This was apparent to anyone who knew our family.
What was less obvious to most was the toll it took on his body. His back, neck, arms. His lack of sleep. He took her to the shower, toilet, up and down stairs, to visit church or friends. At night when she cried out in pain from cramps, he woke to massage her legs and alleviate her pain. He woke to move her in bed, to prevent bedsores. He never complained, but we children noticed. She died long ago, and of course he grieved her; yet seeing his subsequent change—his increase in health and spirit, the disappearance of bags under his eyes and the return of upright posture and vigor, his happy marriage—has been marked. It helps others appreciate the sacrifices he made, our debts.
But I never truly understood what his body and spirit endured until I went through the process of raising my son into adulthood, a connection which went into composing “Caregiving.” In the essay “Now and Then” (Fall 2018 Intima) John Jacobson captures many of the physical and emotional aspects of caregiving when he writes about caring for his wife in decline, over years, of losing her gradually. He writes harrowingly about “caregiver’s envy” and “caregiver’s grief.” I think my wife and I went through some of this when our son received a harsh, possibly fatal diagnosis in his second year of life. That feeling of numbness, that your life has changed, your dreams for him seemingly extinguished, a realization that you are now separate from other people who do not share this experience, who maybe don’t understand the constraints on your time, even resent it. Yet mysteriously, when I read an essay like Jacobson’s, I feel less alone. As Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux wrote: “Good writing works from a simple premise: your experience is not yours alone, but in some sense a metaphor for everyone’s.”
Brian Ascalon Roley has received fellowships and awards from the University of Cambridge, Cornell University, the Ohio Arts Council, Djerassi, Ragdale, and the VCCA. He is currently Professor of English at Miami University of Ohio.
© 2020 Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine