Finding Love and Forgiveness

By Adele Britton Meffley, reprinted from Care Connections with permission from Boulder County Aging Service

I had rock-solid trust in Paul, the wonderful man I had married in 1985. He remained identifiable as "Paul" for the duration of our lives together, but as time went on, his ability to think straight, to reason adroitly, and especially to remember names, places, and things began to collapse. Thirteen years later, as my dear husband continued to decline, I began to realize that devastating infirmity was developing in my body.

By 2003, when Paul was actually diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease, I was stressed and weary. I worked night and day, desperately hard, trying to take care of Paul and keep our lives afloat and manageable. Within a year, I would join the ranks of the 50-60% of caregiving spouses who are stricken with an autoimmune disease. I had contracted a rare, incurable, and often fatal blood disease called amyloidosis. Struggling for my life, I underwent months of chemotherapy and then had a bone marrow transplant. Paul and I were, indeed, a sorry tangle of illness, upheaval, and enormous uncertainty.

Yet instead of suffering, I chose to transcend my problems and focus on healing my mind. I knew that my thoughts about my situation would influence how I would react to everything that was happening. I became a keen observer and a decider. I stopped taking everything so seriously; in fact, I started to see humor, irony, and absurdity everywhere.

I asked that proverbial question, "What if the hokey pokey is what it's all about?", and, to my great delight, it struck me that everything that is not love is hokey pokey. I decided to turn my challenging state of affairs into something profoundly valuable by accepting love into my life and refusing anything else.

My spiritual path has led me to believe that what we call life is really an elaborate dream, an illusion in which everything that happens is purposeful, even perfect. And, further, that I am not a victim of my circumstances. I believe that I have, in fact, called these events into my life as a precise way to learn about love and forgiveness. I believe that when I respond from pure forgiveness, I am invoking my "Highest Self," the place within me that is at peace and union with God. I am imbued with clarity.

In this way, I have been able to step back from both Paul's and my illness and consider my attitudes, feelings, decisions, and judgments. Not wanting to live my life by default, but by choice, I have asked and answered questions such as:

"Am I choosing to look at this through the eyes of love or fear?"

"Am I remembering that this ‘problem' is a self-chosen lesson in forgiveness?"

When I ask myself, "What is this (pain, challenge, sickness, and loss) for?" always, the answer is to remember myself and my husband (as well as others) as only Love.

By not identifying with my body, my illness, or my caregiving responsibilities, I've remained largely lighthearted and at peace. It has also been essential to my healing and well being, to forgive myself for being sick—and also to forgive Paul for his Alzheimer's. I've had to become diligently self-aware to uncover and forgive the deeply hidden guilt, anger, and resentment that I have felt about the turn our lives have taken, and release us both from our mistakes and missteps along the way.

Paul is on a vital journey of his own making, as am I. I don't condemn his Alzheimer's or resist it. Death of a body is not the end. Seeing the sick as diminished is to see them—and ourselves—fearfully. To perceive someone who is ill as eternal Love, Light, and Spirit is the way we bless and honor them—and ourselves. My husband's disease, along with my own, has provided me with a most lofty purpose. It has been a powerful reminder that we can never be separated from Love.

Adele Britton Meffley is a counselor and author of The Hokey Pokey IS What It's All About: Words of Wisdom for the Stressed, the Overworked, the Diagnosed, and Those Who Love Them. Her work is based primarily on A Course in Miracles. She lives in Boulder.

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