Menza Menza

        It’s a Sicilian-Italian thing, but if you asked Gramps how he was feeling, he always responded, “Menza Menza,” meaning “half and half” or “so-so.” I was going through his medical records and sure enough, under chief complaint there are daily comments and it reads, “Pt states he feels half and half today!” I laughed over the fact this made it into his medical documentation. When Gramps would say this to me when I was younger, and frankly, he was younger, my response would be, “does that mean you are half good, half better?” I wasn’t so lighthearted about it when I became a Caregiver. In my Caregiver heightened-sensitivity mind, I assumed something was wrong and that it immediately had to be a health issue and my Woody-Allen-monkey-mind took over and I became neurotic. I would ask what was bothering him, was he feeling okay, what was wrong and on and on. A game of 50 questions would ensue, probing to determine a diagnosis, because I was certain he must be sick and this could be sign of something fatal and that I had to do something to make him feel better! The bottom line was nothing was wrong with him, and he would just have an off-day sometimes. Don’t we all?

I tried to make things perfect for Gramps. That was actually “his thing” in that if you asked how things were going, he would say, “Everything is perfect, quiet, just the way I like it.” This gives me a lot of peace now, knowing he was content, but it was hard to maintain that kind of environment. I ran around like crazy, with long to do lists, routines with set times, cleaning, specific dinner rotations, and it was hard. I don’t live in a perfect world and I am not sure why I thought it necessary to create one for Gramps. I learned to leave perfection up to God, because nothing is perfect, and it’s not a realistic goal. In my “List of things I did wrong as a Caregiver”, it was the quest for perfection. Don’t go there. Don’t even try it. Do the best you can. I am proud that I was a “complete Caregiver” in that I didn’t stop at making sure he ate and took his medicines and he had a roof of over his head –all good starts! I took it to the place where I was concerned about his emotional well-being as well as physical. I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all. When you love someone, you want them to be happy or at least content. Where it goes astray and I may have been misguided is the effort that went into this and the price I paid out of my own happiness bank. Everyone – you and your loved one –everyone is entitled to an off-day. A day where you feel “menza menza.” Let it be. Don’t try to control everything. At work, we often say, “don’t let the quest for perfection be the enemy of good enough.” You can only do so much for someone and their external environment. Their internal workings, thoughts, feelings aren’t anything you can “fix” and it’s not your job to do so. It may sound obvious to you, but I wish someone told me this years ago, so that is why I am sharing it with you now.