Compassion Fatigue

I have to make my own damn coffee

In the health care world we have recently used the term compassion fatigue for professional burnout. Maybe it sounds like something you can fix easier than burnout which sounds like going down in flames in a Top Gun movie. And pretty much is.

I’m still searching for words to describe the betwixt—that time between when he was “there” and then “not there.” This morning I thought about the loss of our coffee ritual.

I admit it. I’m a latte snob.

A good cup of coffee in the Seattle grey mornings somehow makes the clouds seem artsy instead of what they are—bags of rain.

Stuart was the master of our espresso machine. He made coffee in the morning that surpassed anything from Starbucks. It was a gift from him to start my day. And of course it was special to me because he was my soulmate.

When I think about the anticipatory grief of later stage Alzheimer’s, I still get flumoxed. How can one person feel so many contradictory things? Yes I was exhausted. Yes I felt horrible for what was happening to him. But I also felt selfish.

God, I hate even having written that word.

There’s no other explanation. I was pissed that I had to start making my own coffee in the morning. And okay before that I was upset that I had to take the trash out, but that was just petty in my mind. I would get over that. But the loss of his ability to make my coffee? Distressed me to my core.

Mind you we had the whole beans that he would run through the coffee grinder. Then tamp down the freshly ground coffee with the tool that squashed it down into the cavity that was inside the handle, which was then screwed into the espresso machine. He would have to check to make sure the water compartment was full and the brew setting was for a double shot and then push the button that started the heating process. While it was heating he would be busy getting my soy milk ready to be steamed and the Coffee Mate—zero sugar, vanilla—ready. Just one tablespoon please.

While he waited for that he would tidy up around the machine. He was a clean-as-you-go kitchen person. I was a clean up after person.

My point is he went to a lot of trouble to make my coffee. And now he couldn’t anymore. And it pissed me off.

I wasn’t pissed at him, and I so hope it did not come across that way to him. But it probably did. Because it was just too much loss. An intimate loss. A sacred time between us. He loved doing it for me.

I was pissed at God, the Universe, myself, big Pharma, and some existential lack of fairness in the world that this was happening to us. Sometimes it approached raw anger.

And now, thanks too many kind souls, I am practicing compassion for myself. Trying to comfort myself as if I was comforting my best friend.

Of course you were raging against the cascade of losses. How could you not? You adored him. Of course it was too much to bear. You were watching the things that made him who he was erode away. And the coffee thing was just one more thing you had to lose. How could you not strike out at the Universe?

And you were right. Alzheimer’s is always and for everyone unfair.

Self compassion. Also sacred.

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