Caregiving can save your life...

There are so many stories about the gifts from the frontlines of love.  It's not just caregiving a beloved through illness, it may be of a gardener. 

Here is a story from my Sunday volunteering with the Salvation Army in the NorCal wildfire devastation. 

This one is from the Coffee Park Neighborhood in Santa Rosa about a man who loved trees and cared for a Chinese or Lacebark Elm for 35 years. That street tree was the cause of some friction with his wife.  She encouraged him to cut it down for every one of those years but he love the tree. He cared for that tree...and it saved his life and the lives of his neighbors, too. It's October seed pods started burning up in the fire and those seeds rained down on him....thinking it was hail, he woke up...then he started banging on doors, waking up others...and saving them too.

• Sometimes caregiving can kill you.  The stressors are overwhelming.
• Sometimes the blessings take years to understand and digest, as it was with caregiving my mother for eleven years.  
• But sometimes the gifts are at the front door—banging you awake—to save your life.

Go hug a tree or a loved one...for the joy of it. 

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