Being There

There are moments when you’re called upon to undertake some deed. Many times, you may feel overwhelmed by your own inadequacies as you take up your position on the battlefield of life. 

I recall when six months pregnant being summoned to look after a lovely relative who had had a stroke while living in the south of England. Flying from Northern Ireland to the UK I managed to fill all six sick bags across the entire row of seats at the back of the plane.  I’ve never been sure why my pregnant self decided to be so sick. Even during morning sickness, much earlier in the pregnancy, my body had felt nauseous but had refused to regurgitate valuable food. In fact, in all cases of food poisoning in our family, usually the result of a takeaway, my constitution was like that of my dad’s.  While the rest of my sickened family cleared out their systems by one end or the other (i.e. vomiting or diarrhoea), our systems perversely decided our bodies could handle the toxicity and extract some useful nutrition from the poison we had ingested.  To this day I have no idea why my stomach decided on performing like something from The Exorcist but I still remember the horrified expressions of my fellow passengers fighting to provide me with enough bags to contain the huge quantities of carrot coloured lumpy porridge I projected.

I was also well aware of being under-qualified for the task ahead which would involve caring, cooking and moderate housekeeping. I decided to camouflage my deficiencies by faking proficiency in these areas.  This strategy consisted of

1.    Turning the vacuum cleaner on for half an hour a day so that my relative, who was bedridden, would be comforted by the evident housecleaning going on below. I must confess I did not move the vacuum cleaner just turned it on daily, downstairs. In my defence when I started this practice there was a definite improvement in my patient’s demeanour who seemed disproportionately happier and more grateful.

2.     My tasteless meals were presented as being lighter on the stomach and easier to digest. In fact, my farola (finely-milled semolina) pudding dish became a staple favourite as my relative mentioned she had never been served this their entire life. Either that or she was too polite to complain about the food served. Come to think of it that seems much more likely explanation.

3.     My sweet relative knew that other family members around the world were worried to death about her. So, a daily task of mine was writing letters to distant relatives and friends. She would dictate and I would write and subsequently post these missives. She would insist on praising my housekeeping skills, my cooking and my kindness in every letter sent. As she had relatives in almost every continent I felt at times I was undertaking a one-woman self-promotion of sainthood campaign.  At times there I would blush in embarrassment as I wrote my own praises. But even this letter writing seemed to bring the patient pleasure and the avalanche of responses that arrived in the following days and weeks brought welcome messages of love and concern that were sustaining as regular blood transfusions for my patient.

Thankfully she made a full recovery. Eventually, I confessed my vacuuming trick. When she regained mobility, I had to!  She spent the next month trying to tidy and clean her house and find where I had put stuff in her kitchen. These activities I told myself also speeded her long-term recovery.

She was always very grateful and thankful for my presence during her illness and the lesson learned for me was, even when poorly prepared and totally inadequate, just showing up on the battlefield wins you a medal of sorts. Sometimes it’s not about your abilities but about being there for others.  I can look back now and wish I had been more effective and useful but her sweet response to my incompetence taught me so much.  If we stop wasting time thinking about our inadequacies we can probably achieve so much more.

“Let no excessive self-criticism or any feelings of inadequacy, inability or inexperience hinder you …..”

 Riḍván Message 152, Universal House of Justice