Living Together: Part One--Finishing each other's sentences

Living Together:
Finishing each other’s sentences

One (just one!) of the annoying things about Parkinson’s is that everything slows down and gets clumsy. For instance, just buttoning my shirt takes, well…more time than it used to. The left sleeve and neck are almost impossible sometimes. Lots of other simple and more complicated tasks, like cutting up food, typing, and writing, are now more difficult for me and take such a length of time that I tend to avoid them when I can. Speaking is sometimes challenging, as sentences get tangled and the words I’m looking for evade me.

The temptation for family members and others is to jump in there and help. Seeing the annoyance on my face, it seems that the most kind thing to do is to button that button, slice that steak, feign understanding and/or supply the missing thought or word. Makes sense. It helps me. It satisfies the compelling need to assist compassionately. And, let’s face it, it saves time and that “embarrassed for you” feeling. In a subtextual way, help is more often offered to meet our own agenda—a product of our emotional response to disabilities interacting with a lack information about them.

Strange, because “finishing each other’s sentences” is most often seen as a symbol of a deep simpatico. And yet, truth be told, when we do that it’s more indicative of our impatience and desire to dominate the conversation than of a loving, caring mind meld. So, one needs to be aware of from where the need to jump in comes. And if it comes from our needs and not theirs, we should rethink our intervention.

Check back at the pantry for part two of this topic…