The Feeling of Helplessness

How the memory of Debi's final week reminds me of the poverty I am seeing around me.

Does it get easier? I doubt it. It might get less painful over time. This week is a very difficult week (really month, but this week in particular).

Seven years ago was the final week of Debi’s life. Like clockwork, without having any conscious knowledge of the date, it hit me. That feeling of total helplessness. I have been having the usual emotional (and PTSD brain fog) rollercoaster all month. I tend to be pretty open about how weird I may get during August. And the previous few days had been pretty emotional. I few things had happened the day before, but this didn’t seem to be related. Then I realized that we are getting pretty close to the end of August. Like I said, I really had not been paying any attention to dates or even how far into August it was. So I checked the date, and sure enough August 21.

August 21, 2016

Debi had not been able to swallow for a couple of days now. I had taken her to the church, the evening before, for prayer because we had been down this road a year and a half before.

The Previous Stroke-like episode (2014)

The first time it happened, we didn’t realize that you cannot force things down, they just end up in the lungs. When the home nurse arrived, she told us Debi had pneumonia. We decided to go ahead and take her to the hospital since we figured the pneumonia was treatable. She spent a week in the hospital. In the hospital she decided to go ahead and allow them to use a temporary feeding tube. She refused to accept a surgically implanted tube. The doctor didn’t really want to let her go home with this type of tube, but the home care nurses agreed to help us maintain it. Eventually, we removed the tube, because was too much trouble, and decided we would live with what happened. She could swallow enough.

Back to 2016

She had been going through therapy, so she was regaining some of her voice, and a little movement of her right arm. We had been doing water therapy. She had loved to swim in high school and college. So she loved going out to the pool. She was starting to be able to maneuver herself about halfway across the pool (with only a little assistance). We had been hopeful that she would continue to recover to be able to talk and feed herself again. She had a goal to be able to stand on her own again. That was very unlikely, but I always allowed her to hope. She once saw a video of a golfer using a standing wheelchair, and said “See, I’m going to be able to play golf again!” She was able to assist (a little) in moving herself from wheelchair to bed. But honestly, I had to carry her.

It took us by surprise when she started having trouble swallowing again. She had trouble Thursday, but she was able to get some of her meds down that night. The next morning, she was having trouble again. By Friday night she couldn’t swallow anything. Saturday she could barely speak. I was a little upset that we couldn’t get her to swallow, but as I said, I knew I couldn’t force it. She looked me in the eye and attempted to say “its okay”. I knew the answer, but I asked anyway to verify that she did not want to go to the hospital. We had already discussed that fact. Anything they would do would only prolong the inevitable. Which she did not want. She had already filled out all the paperwork to that effect. She was ready to go home.

Saturday night I spent the entire night crying. She couldn’t swallow anything, and without liquids the body can only survive about 7 days. She refused IV’s of any kind. She wanted absolutely nothing that would prolong it. So no fluids. The following morning, I sent this email to the church prayer team:

The email I sent to the church that morning.

She died the following Saturday. There is a lot more about that final week, but this is what I wanted to explain here. What I had expressed in the email was the feeling of being totally helpless. Regardless of how much I knew it was coming, and we had talked many times, and prepared ourselves. When it came down to that moment. When I had to accept that she was dying. I still felt completely helpless and unprepared.

Now and Helplessness

Shortly after I woke up, I noticed that feeling of helplessness come over me. Like I said, it didn’t feel related to the current situation. After a few minutes of prayer I realized that we are getting awfully close to the last week of August. “Oh! Yeah!” I thought to myself, then checked the calendar on my computer. It was the last week of August. “No wonder things have been a little weird lately.” As I allowed myself to process that feeling. Remembering the events of that weekend seven years ago, I noticed I had also been feeling this feeling at other times recently. Not so much in myself, but in others. (I am Autistic, which causes me to experience other people’s emotions, even if I can’t really explain them.)

I started thinking about what other events were reminding me of that feeling. Visions began to run through my head:

• The looks on the faces of the homeless families with young kids camped outside of the old shutdown strip mall.

• Many of those women were breastfeeding young babies.

• The look on the young man who stole my phone. I felt in my soul (the Holy Spirit) that he did not want to do this, but he felt he had no choice.

• The look on the face of the young man’s (yes the thief above) mother who chased me down to return the things of no value (thank God my passport has no value). She apologized for her son (with that look in her eyes), I attempted to express that I understood.

• Maryann, the really sweet lady who asked me to buy her a coffee once at the market. I was actually on my way out to fix what I had just bought for lunch. We sat and talked several hours. Since she hung out around the market near where I was staying, I bumped into her several times.

• The people who would try to sell socks/markers/kleenex while I was trying to eat. I eventually realized this was how they stored their savings, since it would lose value in banks. So I decided to be a little more sympathetic when they hit me up at inopportune times.

• Or dancing or playing music in the streets and subways for a little cash.

• The man working 10 hour days (plus another job) only to make $200 a month ($205 is the poverty line). And nearly in tears trying to figure out how to pay his $200 rent. He explained that he had sold most of his things, but didn’t get paid for the things he sold.

These are all the faces of poverty I have seen over the past several months, not to mention others over the past several years. I tell you this, because I have been trying to write about these situations and the poverty I have been seeing. I haven’t been able to. When I start to write, I would start to feel very frustrated, and scatter-brained. I just couldn’t write. All of those experiences reminded me of that feeling of helplessness. Not so much my own, but hearing and seeing it in them. Unfortunately, it was trigger those memories of Debi’s last week. Specifically, that night when I had to accept she was dying. As soon as I tried to write about it, my brain would start throwing all kinds of things at me so that I wouldn’t think about that memory. This is what PTSD does.

This week, I finally allowed myself to relive that memory. I cried for about 45 minutes. Then I could see clearly. That was exactly the feeling all of these people live day-to-day. That is why I haven’t written much lately. Honestly, July and August have a lot of trauma for me, but I there was more to it than just my usual trauma. It was that I could not process the feelings I was observing.

It is hard living among people in poverty. Knowing that they are doing everything they know how to, but it just isn’t enough. Knowing that what I do is only a drop of water in the ocean, but yet I pray that God can use a few drops to create a wave or tsunami. It saddens me that there aren’t more people able to live like this, but I also understand. You cannot do it unless God calls you and gives you the strength to do it.

(There is much I could say about the Church’s missteps, but now is not the time.)

What I am doing

I spent the past several months in Buenos Aires, making connections and business planning. I am now back in Brazil, specifically in Recife, and heading to Goinna on Friday. Renato is getting married September 9, and while I am there, I am going to work with some of the local pastors to document the needs and projects that we are preparing to do in Goiana.

While I was in Buenos Aires, I was working on setting up some consulting services. I will be sending the launch details very soon! These services are to help bring in stable income for myself, the others working with me, and our projects, provide training opportunities for people in Brazil (and now Argentina), and build a following to help promote the fundraising projects. Plus, I am documenting what I am doing, and offering a community to help others learn how to do some of these things too!

If you want to help out, by donating or hiring/signing up for our services, you can find all the options on my website at https://chetbailey.com/plans (you can access it anytime from the “Support” menu option above.)

And of course, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to this newsletter if you aren’t already.