Catherine Drea: Caring for the carers

If I was giving a special gift of thanks to anyone this Christmas it would have to be to parents and other carers who look after their loved ones with such kindness day in and day out. 

It’s easy to overlook the hard work of carers as they rarely make the headlines or feature in flashy award ceremonies. Caring is not just for Christmas, it is a relentless giving of love no matter what time of the year it is.

Finding great ways to give support to each other is what makes caring so special. It’s not just kindness, it’s so much more. Caring for others is true love.

This year because I am a fan of Chris McCausland’s comedy, I watched him take part in Strictly Come Dancing. Strictly is 20 years old, so I’m inclined to give it a wide berth at this stage. But Chris, a very funny person, is also visually impaired and now totally blind so the idea of him taking on this challenge really intrigued me. Chris has never seen Strictly nor had a clue about the differences between all of the dances usually performed on it. How on earth was he going to tackle all the challenges involved?

As time went on over the last few weeks, it became incredible to watch him dance (in the dark) across a huge dancefloor performing beautiful and emotional dances with his partner and teacher Dianne Buswell. The level of support, teaching and deep friendship that she provided, allowed him to excel and win against all of the odds.

Seeing him in training with Diane, trying to understand where his feet and arms should be, how the steps for each different dance would work, how to master the space when he had no idea where the edge was or which end was which, was simply incredible. He had to rely on his teacher and supporter to communicate and deliver every single step.

She would get down on the floor to place his feet or he would crawl on the floor to feel her feet and try to physically understand the dance. Each week, in spite of all these challenges he progressed. It was of course impossible for him to see videos of himself or to visualise the other participants and how they were doing. Instead he just had to get on with it and learn an entirely new routine every Monday morning. It was impossible to watch them dance together and not feel moved and more than that completely blown away by it all.

Chris learned to dance! He rarely made a mistake, figured out how to follow the routines, managed to perform spectacular lifts and won the hearts of the public who voted for him to stay, week in and week out.

At one point in some interview, Chris said that he was learning how more than anything, aiming for perfection and valuing it above everything is in fact crippling. This is probably the biggest lesson from his win. There is much more to winning than perfection. More to life than being the best. Anyone who puts their mind to it and has the right kind of support can get to where they want to be. But it takes so much courage.

It’s not much different for the day in and day out challenges of being a carer to someone who depends on us. I remember when my own father was in the last years of his life that it was quite painful to spend time with him. When it was my turn to be there, I used to stop outside the house and talk to myself about how I would endure the next few days. It was a kind of resilience test. Yet when I walked into his room I would have to be in “carer mode”. So many people are in carer mode 24/7. How do they do it? How do they stay sane? How do they thrive? You would imagine that a carer would have to be a very special kind of person but that’s not how it works. The most ordinary human amongst us will at some stage be a carer for someone. We do it because that’s life and mostly we end up having no choice!

Caring is the hardest job. It can become a burden when it involves too much administration, too many hurdles to be overcome, a complete lack of facilities and barriers to living life to the full. It becomes heartbreaking when our loved ones are isolated and don’t get the support that they fully deserve.

We are all only temporarily able bodied. Sometimes this comes home to us when we are young and maybe break a leg. Suddenly our world shrinks. But for most of us, carrying old war wounds and battle scars happens more and more as we get older. There is no perfection in life, and we will all be dependent at some stage. Probably just when we least expect it…

Ireland’s 500,000 plus family carers provide upwards of €20 billion worth of care every year. Most are unpaid, some are really struggling with keeping going. In spite of everything they will be working all through the next few weeks as usual.

Remember carers this Christmas and how much we all owe them.