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Squeamishness

I have had the sorrow this past week of saying goodbye to my mother-in-law after her long battle with breast cancer ended as well as visiting my mother in the hospital after a fall in which she injured her head (fracturing her occipital ridge).  For the latter I had been warned about her appearance after her injury, and for the former all of us knew that my mother-in-law would be in an open casket.

I am a very squeamish person. One of the reasons that I love to cook is because I am squeamish about foods I do not like, and can feel safe with food that I prepare. As an introvert I run out of things to say quickly in conversation unless I have a role to play (teacher, parent, ombuds, etc.) in which case I'm okay. Otherwise I am ready to be elsewhere and can feel the nervous tension mount.

I am not very squeamish about body horror, although I avoid it in entertainment as something that is not entertaining.  I have been with folk who have injured bodies and with embalmed corpses in coffins. I have been standing next to my wife twice while she was sliced open for cesarean deliveries. I do not flinch in these circumstances. I would like to think that it is because my attention is not on these details bur rather the people, comforting my wife as she delivered, grieving for my mother-in-law, trying to make some kind of connection with a mother diminished by dementia. Blood, viscera, an unnatural embalmed complexion, these are details and not the stories themselves.

As a parent I have been to the ER with my children multiple times. I have not flinched at the time, while hours later I have often been nauseous at the pain my children have gone through. 



So I have made peace with my squeamishness as the diminishment it has caused in my life has been with minor things. This is okay with me as long as it doesn't affect the big stuff.

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