A letter to the parents who are chronically ill (You are not a failure)

Dear Parent with a chronic illness,

You don’t have to say it aloud. I’ve read it in your sighs, your looks, your actions.

The confession.

The apology.

My sickness has damaged the happiness of my child.

I, who brought them into the world, who had all these plans, these hopes – have been able to do one percent of all I dreamed.

I wasn’t the one to bake with them, to take them to the beach, to bushwalk, to laugh – someone else did these things, and sometimes, no one did them.
A

m I a failure?

You don’t think these thoughts all the time. You are too strong, too smart, too sensible, for that. Your Hope in the Life that will be (which will more than make up for this one) is too tenacious. And yet, sometimes I suspect these thoughts wander through your mind.

I know they would wander through mine, were the situations reversed.

So I write you this letter. Not because written words can replace spoken ones, but because there’s something formal about them, something reassuring. Besides, this letter is long, and often you don’t have the energy or health for an extended emotional chat. And that is okay.

Where should I start?

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I could remind you that I love you, and would never wish you away, simply because you are my mother. But you would laugh, and shrug that off, because you believe that “all children think that”. Perhaps you are right.

I could explain that I never wanted any of those things healthy parents give their children. I never wanted to bush-walk or cook or play monopoly. And while that would be true in one sense (you are more important than your gifts) it would be a lie to say I have never dreamed of an alternative life with a healthy version of you in which we did those things.

I could shrug away your concerns and point out that none of this matters, because we can’t change the past and we have a Future to look forward to. What will be will be. But that would be unhelpful, as it would trivialise your pain and mine.

So instead of explaining that your sickness has not minimised my life, I will display how it has enriched it.

Because you are sick, I know:

What it is to give, even when you don’t receive,
To receive even when you can’t give,
To live in a world that does not revolve around me,
To seek something Better than this life,
To comfort someone older than myself,
To view sickness as simply a component of a person, and still respect them,
To love in plenty and in want,
And to accept that life is not perfect, and not ideal, and that is okay and even good.

Those are the lessons I’ve learnt from your sickness, but you are not your sickness. You are you.

And from you I’ve learnt to love the elderly, to make do with little, to double question every fact and make rational decisions, to delight in animals (even those society does not deem cute!), to care enough about my appearance to look nice when I ought to, and not to care when I can’t, and most of all…

To persevere.
To get up and to live each day.

Not because it’s exciting, not because life is always good, not because things are going my way,
But because that is how we love others,
And that is how we live for God.

Dear Parent with a Chronic Illness, at times you may feel like a failure. You may feel as though you have little to offer, and even less to delight in…

You may feel as though you have not changed the life of your child one iota.

But know this.

In loving, you have taught them how to love. In not being perfect you have trained them to seek Perfection. In being sick you have shown them how to genuinely live this life with all its ups and downs.

Dear Parent, you are loved and your sickness has not lessened who you are, but added to it.

It is not a good thing, but it has brought good.

Even if you can’t yet see it.

Much love,

A child with a chronically ill Parent.

// What would you add if you were writing a letter?

 

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