Welcome to Holland

Welcome to Holland

By

Emily Perl Kingsley

I am often asked to describe the experience of caregiving for a spouse. To try to help people understand it, try to imagine how it would feel …It’s like this…

When you are going to retire, you plan a vacation. To Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum, the Michelangelo David, the gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.

After several months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The flight attendant comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”

“Holland?!? What do you mean Holland?!? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be I Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.”

But there has been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.

They haven’t taken you to a bad place. Just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. You will meet a whole new group of people.

It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while, you catch your breath and look around. You begin to notice that Holland has windmills, and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy…and they are bragging about what a wonderful time they’ve’ had there. And for the rest of your life you will; say, “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.”

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away…because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss. But if you spend your time mourning over Italy, you may never get to enjoy the special lovely things about Holland.