This year’s Labor Day post is for the people you don’t meet until you need them. They do things you wouldn’t have imagined you would ever need.
The people who shepherd a frightened family member through a traumatic trip to the ER. The people who help you coordinate home care when you know absolutely nothing about what to do and what you need.
The people who deliver and set up the hospital bed.
Physical therapists. Occupational therapists. The people whose job is it to keep taking X-rays while trying not to cause pain.
And, most of all: the carers. You definitely aren’t going to meet them under ordinary circumstances.
You are so exhausted that you have contemplated walking out into traffic just to end the continual fear that you are doing something wrong. You desperately need help and you are afraid that sharing the load is shirking your responsibility or means that you don’t care as much as your ought to.
Our culture treats this kind of care work as something quite low - - unskilled, even. Anyone could do it.
This is deeply wrong. Not just factually incorrect but morally reprehensible.
Carers come into your home with experience and willingness. They are knowledgeable about things that can make a world of difference to you and to the person you care about.
- feeding
- washing
- soothing
- listening
- interacting
- cheering
- encouraging
- protecting
- cleaning
- coordinating
In this country many carers have come here from other places and are doing the work no one else wants to do. They may not look like you or speak like you or practice the same religion as you do. But, let me tell you: the religion of care is universal.
After the last year I have decided that these are the folks who should be the highest paid and most respected rather than demeaned and discriminated against.
The most basic need anyone has in this life is care. And professional carers know how to give your loved one a shower without breaking them, wrangle high-tech hospital beds and cantankerous tray tables, encourage a fragile and uncertain client to get dressed and sit in their own yard to enjoy the weather and connect with their neighbors, know what things are to be expected and which ones you should call the doctor about…
You don’t know how much you need that. Until you really, really need it.
Our system is not set up to give workers like this a fair shake. It doesn't take long to figure this out.
Their lives are harder, hours longer, employment choices more limited. For most of us, the time we will need carers is finite. We are living through a crisis for a time. At some point that will change.
The carers keep caring. If not for us, then for someone else. They move from our crisis to someone else’s.
Today is Labor Day. It’s a national holiday. I can assure you that there will be carers working while many of us have the day off.
I salute them. I’m grateful for them. They deserve our respect.
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