Caregiving Tasks: From The Mundane to The Meaningful

My friend was a patient at the San Diego Hospice Inpatient Care Center and needed a shave badly.  He had a weeks worth of beard growth on him. Unfortunately, he was too weak to shave himself and to further complicate things, both of his hands and arms had IV’s connected to them. When someone you love is in coping with a serious illness and going from doctor appointment to doctor appointment, things like shaving and haircuts tend to fall by the wayside. My friend said he would feel more comfortable having a guy shave his face then one of the female nursing assistants for some reason. I being the only guy there in the room at the time, was given the honors.

I put a moist towel on his face to soften his beard, put shaving cream on his face and began to slowly and carefully shave the bristly hair off, exposing his handsome face beneath the shaving cream. When I was done, it was a very liberating feeling for my friend to have a clean shaven face. I too felt like I had lifted a weight off of his shoulders.

My friend passed away a month later. Every now and then when I lather up my own face and begin to shave, I think about my friend. It is a meaningful and pleasant reminder of him to me. If you have the caregiving responsibility for a loved one, it may seem like activities of daily living become a mundane and regular thing to do, but those mundane regular things you do, may someday become the most meaningful.

Tim Chan is an avid fitness and auto enthusiast and has worked with San Diego Hospice for more than seven years.