For My Husband on Father's Day

Every day for almost a decade my husband Alan has been on call. He has been on call for me since I became chronically ill with CFS.
Man! There is a thankless unrelenting job.
Not what he bargained for when we got married almost 30 years ago. Even 17 years ago, when I first got sick, the caretaking role wasn't really on just yet. Then I would be flattened for 6 weeks at a time, about twice a year, but I'd get back up and life would carry on.
Somewhere between the fall of 1999, and 2004, the occasional rescue role drifted over into full-time care.
Care of the house, care of the kids, transportation for the kids, grocery shopping, running errands, at its pinnacle, laundry, grocery lists, meal preparation, including bringing me my food to my bed and sometimes cutting it for me.
A glamourous life, no?
I think it must have been a tough existence, having a wife who used to look good who now looked like an unmade bed in a wooly aquamarine housecoat.
Having a wife who only appeared in the livingroom twice a day. In the morning for a couple of hours, reading on the couch under a quilt, until it's time to go back to bed to sleep for a few hours.
Then she reappeared at 5 p.m., and on good days made dinner, because it made her feel more human to do so. Spent dinnertime together and maybe an hour or so after that, watching TV together. And then she was cooked and went back to bed to read.
That leaves a guy a lot of hours sitting by himself, being available to field anything that comes up with the kids. Because Mom can't be stressed. Mom can't be weighed down with anything that might involve . . . thinking.
He would say kindly to me, "You're on vacation."
I appreciated the intended sentiment. Detested the actual situation. And replied, "I have the worst vacations of anyone I know."
Which of course was not true, many people are far worse off than me. But I still had a point.
When you figure that in all these years he had no way of knowing if he'd ever get his wife back; when you take a look at all the marriages that DON'T last these days; when you assess how much added burden this piled on to his life; well, you give him a long, hard, look and see a very brave, stalwart, loving man who has required, really, nothing in return from me but to let him love and protect me.
Wow.
Alan is a lucky man. Luckier than many men whose wives are still sick, who don't know what their futures hold. This man is getting his wife back.
Thanks to a good naturopath, thanks to a good mother-in-law (my mama), thanks to ... thanks especially to his own constant, unwavering effort of carrying me and our family, all this time, flung across his shoulders.
Almost 30 years ago, Alan and I were moving from one upstairs apartment to a house just down the street. We had a few people to help us move, but he carried the couch on his back, down the outside staircase from the apartment, down the street, and into the living room of our new house.
I and our helpers protested but he ignored us. He did the same thing with the fridge.
I can still picture him on that staircase, like an urban courieur du bois portaging his canoe, or in this case, his couch.
He liked to carry stuff. Liked to take on a challenge and beat it.
It's taken a really long time with the CFS challenge. And I know I'm not 100% healed yet. But I do believe he has beaten the challenge again.
Happy Father's Day, Baby.

Back to My Road to Recovery from CFS

Back to Articles Page