WE CONTAIN MULTITUDES

 (An occasional post written during my 25 years as a hospice social worker during which time I learned more about living than I did about the end game we all will experience):

A patient of mine died last week. It was expected. She was 98 years old and her husband, who visited on the days when their only son could drive him to the nursing home, is 103. Despite the fact that she had been slowly slipping away for several years because of her Alzheimer's disease and no longer knew him he sat for hours at her bedside sometimes holding her hand. More often than not he would nap along with her. They had been married for 81 years and never had been able to save much so he asked for some help paying for her funeral and I was working on finding some funds for him.

As I was sharing this story with co-workers one person commented that it's hard to imagine being with one person for 81 years. I suggested that over the span of 81 years she wasn't the same person. Even without cognitive changes surely she was not the same person she was as a 17-year-old new bride.
The thing is, it doesn't take 81 years to change and become over time what Emerson called "multitudes"; all of who we are, all of the gathered or emerging pieces are shaped and re-formed over the years as we incorporate our lives and loves into the process of becoming. How can we even recognize the different people we become, our partners become, over the course of a lifetime relationship much less welcome them and honor their presence.


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