Forgiveness in Real Life

When your body already hurts, the mind doesn't always cooperate. Some people meet physical pain by turning inward, nursing resentment, especially when they believe the pain came from someone else's carelessness. I know that reflex. What I've found, though, is that anger loosens its grip only when you decide to forgive.

A few days ago I ended up on the floor of my own home. I use a wheelchair, and that morning I was sitting in a smaller chair fitted with little wheels. We keep that chair around because it moves me short distances without the full production of transferring into the wheelchair. It saves everyone time and effort. Usually two caretakers are on duty together. That day there was only one.

The two women who look after me could not be more different. The older one has been with me for years. She pays attention, she reads a room, she handles me like someone who has done it a thousand times. The younger woman joined about three months ago. She tries hard, I'll give her that, but she rattles easily, especially when the senior caretaker isn't beside her. Left alone, she gets jittery and unsure of what to do next. Her temper runs hot and her focus drifts. She'll act before thinking, then apologize with real feeling and beg me to forgive her. I always have.

That day she arrived in a mood. Someone had phoned her about a private matter and it clearly sat heavy on her, though she kept the details to herself. I climbed onto the chair the way I always do. She started pushing, and I could tell the anger in her was going straight into her hands. The next thing I knew I was on the ground, and the pain was enormous.

My arthritis is severe, so the people who care for me normally move with caution. In thirty years of living this way, that was the first time anyone had dropped me. Thirty years. Some of the newer helpers don't seem to grasp what that means: I need to be handled with steadiness and confidence, and someone else's nerves become my injury. I'm at peace with my situation. Other people's anxiety is the variable I can't control, and it's hardest with those still learning the work.

Here is where the frustration set in. She had been with me for three months. I assumed she could manage on her own for one shift. She knew about my chronic arthritis and the swelling in my joints, and it didn't change how roughly she moved. After the fall she apologized, the way she always does, but once she settled me into bed to rest, she brushed the whole thing aside and asked what I wanted for lunch. I decided then that she was either too young for this or simply indifferent, and that she had picked the wrong line of work.

For hours I lay there in shock while the pain kept building. That's when it hit me that I needed help right away. I reached for my phone and called my husband and a relative who works as a caretaker at a hospital nearby. They were at my side within minutes and got me to the hospital soon after.

The physical pain was nothing next to the bitterness I carried, because I had opened the new year flat on a hospital bed. Still, I have a full life. I'm a college-educated woman in India with everything I need to keep working and stay useful. I run a few businesses, one of them writing articles online. For several days afterward I couldn't work at all. Even now I type slowly, pushing through the resentment as I go.

Working through it is what finally let me forgive her. She isn't the first to mishandle me. Over the years a handful of my helpers have made mistakes bad enough to land me in the hospital. Since last week I've managed the pain with massage, exercise, and medication. The harder part, the emotional part, only eased once I found the forgiveness in myself.

Anonymous Contributor