The heart of a caregiver.
A Story by Leeza Gibbons

I sat with one of our guests at Circle of Care Leeza’s Place on Friday at lunchtime. Beverly was looking especially pretty in a bright yellow top and her make up (as usual) impeccable. She was loving, charming, nurturing….asking about everyone else and smiling and laughing. More than once Beverly made it a point to thank me and my mom for creating Leeza’s Place since it had become “her home away from home”- it was her safe place. She reminded me of so many other caregivers who’s hearts I have come to know. Open, tender and kind. You would have never known that just five days earlier, Beverly’s husband Al had passed away. She was now a grieving widow, and yet there was not one ounce of ptiy surrounding her. “I know he is in a better place”, she told me” and she continued to say that she hadn’t cooked so much lately since he had been sick.

Beverly loves to cook and she’s good at it. In fact, on this very day , she had baked carrot cake cupcakes for her group at Leeza’s Place, complete with her own handy little Tupperware carry-caddy. I thought about how that is just one of the changes that have occurred in Beverly’s life. Her church just shut it’s doors. She founded the church and taught Sunday school there to 300 children. In the end, not one child passed through the door. Churches are supposed to last forever , even if husbands don’t. I could see the sadness in her eyes when she told me, but she quickly caught herself and said, You know, Leeza; you laugh and the world laughs with you, but if you cry, you cry alone.”

She had vowed to try out a new church that very Sunday saying she was going to take her time to make sure the “congregation was friendly”.
As with many caregivers, Beverly has faced her share of health problems and had just had a stint put in her heart. She has lost weight, but not her sense of purpose or her joy in life. I was so inspired by her that I was encouraged to write these words about caregivers with admiration and respect during National Caregiver’s Month and always.

THE HEART OF A CAREGIVER

The heart of a caregiver is tender but strong.
Open and hopeful.
It is hope that is reborn daily
After nights of worry and little sleep.

The caregivers heart is capable of forgiveness
And friendship that knows no boundaries.
It breaks often but grows stronger
After each tear in it’s seams.

A caregiver’s heart can find answers
Where no one else can
And can give solace to even
The most tortured soul.

In the life of a caregiver ,
Many tears fall . Sometmes
Quietly and softly;
Sometimes with anger and confusion
That seems to force
Hot wet rivers of frustration down their cheeks.

A caregivers work is never done
And is often given with lots of
Love but little recognition.
Even when blame is everywhere
And all roads seem like deadends,
The caregiver stays on the job.

Because a careagivers heart is
A beautiful thing.
It loves without condition.
And it always sees what is possible
Rather than what it is a problem.

Leeza Gibbons,
Nov. 2008