The elderly Jewish taxi driver is seeing a therapist to help ease the pressure of looking after his ill wife. His story unfolds and he talks about his alcoholic mother and how he needed to protect his younger brother from her rages. When he got married he and his wife had a severely disabled child who he has looked after. Now his wife has Alzheimer’s.
The therapist says, “When you think about it you’ve been a carer all you life”. The taxi driver replies “Carer is a modern word, what I’ve been is a son, a brother, a father and a husband”.
I find this a very moving statement, it expresses a dignity and set of values that in our “blame and claim” society we might be in danger of losing. Some pain can be eased, some has to be born as best we can.