A Roberts Creek writer who spent 18 months tending to her dying spouse has written about the emotional rollercoaster of the care-giving experience in a just-published anthology.
“Unless you’ve done it, people cannot remotely comprehend how exhausting and overwhelming it is,” Heather Conn said in an interview. “I basically had to let go of everything I normally do and just had to focus on care-giving and working.”
Conn’s account of what she and husband Frank McElroy endured before he died recently at 64 from liver cancer is remembered in a poignant essay entitled A Slow Goodbye, which has been included in the anthology New Beginnings, from Timbercrest Publishing. Thirty-nine writers contributed essays, stories and poems to the book. Net proceeds from the publishing project will go to SHARE Family & Community Services, a Lower Mainland non-profit organization.
Conn writes of both the frustration about her own derailed life and the agony of watching a loved one fade into helplessness. “He rotates between our bed, the commode, and the couch,” Conn wrote. “It’s hard to watch him struggle as he lifts himself up from the bed and stands briefly, teetering on now-too-skinny legs. He can use a walker only for short spurts, not wanting me to help him. I understand. We’re both stubborn, favouring self-reliance.”
Conn, who earns a living teaching writing, had long planned to visit Easter Island in the southeast Pacific for her 60th birthday last January, but McElroy’s deteriorating condition made that impossible. Instead, the writer has woven the troubled history of the island into her essay. “It was a metaphor in that even though you have a lot of losses, there can also be some new beginnings and renewal, too,” Conn said.
The 350-page New Beginnings anthology is available at Talewind Books in Sechelt and directly from Conn at hconn@dccnet.com
A celebration of life ceremony will be held for Frank McElroy at the Roberts Creek Legion on Sunday, Sept. 8 at 2 p.m.
