Families logo

I’ll See Your Pandemic and Raise You Two Broken Arms and a Mom with Dementia

Playing the One-up Game

By Ella ThomasPublished 2 years ago 7 min read
1

I can still remember the old folks making fun of us kids at family picnics or reunions when we would start to complain about how bad we had it. A complaint about how miserable it was to ride a bus to school would be met with a response about having to walk two miles through a blinding snow storm in -10 degree wind chills just to get to school because “when we were young there was no such thing as snow days or school buses.”

I used to think that was just a generational thing and once the older generation left us for heaven or, in some cases, a well-earned stay in a much hotter location, the need to outdo the suffering of the younger generation would go with them. But as I’ve moved into the ranks of the “older” generation I find that it’s actually a tradition passed from generation to generation. And rather than something to roll our eyes at or make fun of, maybe it’s something we need to treasure just like grandma’s rocking chair and daddy’s fishing poles. If nothing else it puts everything into perspective as became all too clear when the “pandemic” descended on us.

When it began we were all scared. You could feel it. You could see it in the need to buy up a hundred rolls of toilet tissue, to switch to lactose free milk because it had a longer expiration date than regular milk and the expression on people’s faces when they heard someone around them coughing. And we had a right to be scared although most of us were spared the true suffering of the pandemic. Most of us didn’t have to say good-by to a loved one in a cell phone call or zoom call. Most of us didn’t have to work 12 hour shifts in a hospital watching patient after patient die without being able to do anything to stop it. Most of us didn’t have to bury two parents who left behind small children who had nowhere to go. Let’s face it, for most of us the pandemic was “inconvenient.” The older generation would have scoffed at us and told us “you think this is bad, you should have been around during WWII.”

I have to be honest and admit that the pandemic was barely “inconvenient” for me. Not being a social person by nature I didn’t miss Friday nights eating out, Saturday night karaoke or even Sunday morning church services. My work schedule wasn’t disrupted because I worked from home. I had no kids so I didn’t suddenly have to uproot my entire life to figure out how to help them with their home schooling and what I hear is “new math” that is apparently even more incomprehensible to the older generation than our new math was to our parents 20-30 years ago. No, my life went on much as it always had with a few changes to my routine. I called my grocery order in and waited for them to deliver it to my car. That’s a change I can more than live with since I never much enjoyed grocery shopping to begin with. When I wanted to eat out, I either picked up take out or had it delivered to my door, saving me a trip in the car and gas money. In fact, as I look back now over the past two years I realize that the only things I really missed were getting together with family and friends to celebrate special occasions, going to Renaissance festivals and taking an occasional cruise. All things I’ll get to do again soon.

And being an official member of the older generation I found myself playing the one-up game taught to me by my elders. I became the one to scoff at the younger generation when they complained about not being able to go to the movies or concerts or travel or go on school trips or even participate in school athletic events. A friend’s daughter complained that her study abroad program had been canceled and I responded with “You should be grateful you even had the opportunity. When I was in high school nobody’s parents had the money to send their kids on a glorified vacation to Italy for a semester.” Another friend complained that she hadn’t been able to see her parents in more than a year because they lived in another country and I told her she should be grateful she was able to talk to them on the phone and do zoom calls with them because when my dad was in Vietnam for a year I couldn’t do either. And when someone complained that the pandemic was the most horrible year they had ever had I heard myself saying “Oh please, I’ll see your pandemic and raise you two broken arms and a mom with dementia.”

And that’s when it hit me what the one-up game was really all about. As I said, the pandemic wasn’t a horrible experience for me personally, although I shared in the collective grief for all the good people we lost to it. The 3-4 years preceding the pandemic were the most difficult years of my life. My mom had a stroke followed by descent into dementia. I was her full-time caregiver because she was terrified of being put into a nursing home and I promised her I wouldn’t let that happen. So for 4 years I had to go from keeping an eye on her to doing everything for her. I had to watch an independent otherwise physically healthy woman turn into a toddler. And in the middle of it all when I was the only one there to pick her up off the floor if she fell, to help her bathe and dress and fix her meals and clean the house and find 8 hours a day to work my job from home, I ended up with two broken arms. I can still remember how hard it was to hide the pain from her when I had to pick her up off the floor with one arm in a splint and the other in a cast. Because even though she was slowly drifting away from reality, she could still see emotions, including pain, in those around her. So I would hide how excruciating it was when at least once a week I had to pick her up or when I had to use both my arms to get her bathed and dressed. And the physical pain was nothing compared to the emotional pain of having to say a very long, slow goodbye to her. When I look back on those years I often wonder how I got through it all and as soon as I said the words “I’ll see your pandemic and raise you two broken arms and mom with dementia” I realized that I got through it because of the one-up game.

When I would be at my lowest and wondering how I was going to get through the next hour, much less the next day and the day after that I would remember how my mom would talk about enduring the London Blitz as a child or my father talking about being sent off as a five year old to live with relatives for more than a year after his father just “disappeared.” The one-up game wasn’t about trying to outdo the younger generation in suffering or even about ridiculing what for them was a very unpleasant, even traumatic experience. It was the next generation reaching out and saying “Yeah, it’s bad what you’re going through, but imagine how much worse it could be. We survived something worse and you will survive this.” They were giving us an invaluable tool to use when the pain was almost too much to endure. We knew that others had gone through what we were going through, if not something even much worse, and they had not only made it through that experience, they had come to appreciate how good they had it in the here and now. So I’ll continue to play the one-up game so that one day the next generation can say to their children and grandchildren, “I don’t want to hear about it. I survived the pandemic.”

© 2022 Ella Thomas. All rights reserved.

values
1

About the Creator

Ella Thomas

I have been writing since I read my very first book (Mabel the Whale). I didn't like the way the story went so I rewrote it. My "overactive imagination" eventually led me to create my own stories and now I am finally sharing some of them.

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.