I know. When you're sick it's all about you, you, you. I get that. When I'm sick it's all about me [unless my child or spouse is sick at the same time, then suddenly it's not about me.]

How do I cross this great divide? How do I maneuver over this rope bridge from normal everyday living that in itself is fraught with pain, fear and despair and leap to the other side where chronic illness keeps us wrapped around its' little finger smirking at our bewilderment, smug at our fatigue.

When you are in pain, I am in pain. It's that simple.

While you are in pain, I must deal with everything else. That everything includes pharmacies and doctors, prescriptions and shopping, appointments and bills, finances and follow up. There is just work and work and more work and it's never-ending and I don't know how everyone else has managed to do this for their loved ones.

There must be a book out there I can read that will help me organize and delegate and surrender and refuse to do.

The very wealthy hire nurses and financial advisors, lawyers and private chefs. They suffer emotional pain but their physical surrounding are cared for.

The very poor rely on medicaid and medicare and social security; they rely on their church, their family, their neighbors.

I juggle somewhere in between these two extremes. I must work AND take care of everything else. But the fact is, there is not enough time to do it all. Some things will have to give. And we need to let them go.

Let go of the immaculate house. Not going to happen. Let go of the perfect manners. Not going to happen. In fact, I will swear like a sailor often - build that into the equation. Let go of pride, be humble, ask for help. We cannot do it all.

Do not expect me to be happy happy happy! Do not expect me to be calm always or often. Do not expect me to look radiant and beam like the sun. I'm not a nurse, I'm not an accountant and I'm not a saint. Stop expecting those roles from me. I'm trying just to keep us afloat on this island for awhile, to keep us out of emergency rooms, out of foreclosure, out of bankruptcy [not that bad yet.] Sometimes trying has got to be enough.

Sanity is so underappreciated when we have it in spades and so missed when we start to lose it. I'm attempting to keep most of mine. Don't distract me.

When you're in pain, I'm in pain. I have sickening headaches, waves of nausea, my neck is trashed, my back hurts. Our biography becomes our biology. The body absorbs and processes each day and lets you know loud and clear when it's all too much.

It's not just all about you, you, you or all about me. It's all about US. There is no "norm" in the household when one of us is sick.

I need a wife. I need a hand to hold. I need a caregiver too.

I need grace.

And small mercies.