BEING HELPFUL WITHOUT BEING A NUISANCE [SAT, 8-3-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—BEING HELPFUL WITHOUT BEING A NUISANCE [SAT, 8-3-24]

 

Helen has had a bum knee. Painful even when off of it, but especially bad when standing or walking. So I’ve been doing extra stuff in addition to my usual chores. Carrying her meal tray, watering the flowers, etc. The problem is, she’s getting better.

No, I don’t mean it’s bad for her to feel better. But now she’s getting in the way. She is going back to doing the stuff she’s always done. Not entirely. Just enough to be confusing. Now when I try to help, as often as not, I just get in the way.

The trick is to be helpful without being a nuisance.

That is always the issue of course, at any age, but it’s a pointed issue for old people, because folks want to be helpful to us, and we’re smart enough—most of us, most of the time—to know that we need help. But we don’t want help when we don’t need it. That’s when helpful people are no longer helpful but instead are a nuisance.

My mother was a special problem when it came to help. She had a lot of problems, and needed a lot of help. She liked being a victim and needing help. Except when she didn’t. Then she acted like she was being molested if you tried to help. She would not decline help by saying
“No, thank you,” or “I can do this myself,” but she would literally yell, “Get away from me.”

Neither of my parents could drive, so in their latter years, Helen and I took them wherever they needed to go. When we arrived at our destination, Helen usually had my father on her arm, for he was blind and needed the guidance. So I would get Mother’s walker out of the trunk, and pull her out of the car and onto the walker. I would walk beside her, ready for a fall, but she would wave dismissively. “Go ahead,” she’d say. I couldn’t do that. She could fall when left on her own. Also…

…it was embarrassing to me. Here would be an able-bodied son leaving his poor old mother to struggle along on her own. There were always other people around to see that. What happens when someone who needs to help and someone who refuses help collide?

Helen and I sometimes do that literally in the kitchen. She does the cooking. I do the cleanup. Sometimes we want to be in the kitchen at the same time, doing our respective tasks. But it’s not big enough for cooking and cleaning up at the same time.

Receiving help puts us into debt. Some folks can’t stand being in debt. Not just financial. Especially emotional debt. I had a friend who is very much like Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory TV show. Sheldon never wants to receive a gift, for he feels he must give the giver a return gift of equal value. One time he even handed Penny something like $1.32 in cash when he learned that his even-it-up gift to her cost him $1.32 less than she had paid for his gift. I tried not to give my friend anything, even a compliment, for I knew he would spend days trying to figure out an equal compliment that he could give to me. It was exhausting for both of us.

There is no sure way to give help, or even offer it, without getting in the way. We just have to be both kind and forgiving, as we offer help and as we accept it.

John Robert McFarland

[Okay, so that’s a banal cliché ending. Listen, I can’t do an O. Henry ending every time. Be forgiving of boring writers, too.]