about being blessed

People use the word "blessed" in many circumstances.
It is used too often or when I feel it is not truly appropriate.
Lately I have been getting emails or statements on FB telling me how blessed I am. Blessed that I still have my husband.

Blessed? Really?
Obviously these are well meaning people with a smidgen of and often too much religious fervor. If I was still a member of the Catholic church I would not feel blessed but perhaps welcome the idea that I am suffering-hence there will be a reward-somewhere sometime, suffering is good.....Mother Theresa loved it. OK, I am no longer there . I have fallen from graces or just grew up, I can't remember.

In any case , lets take this apart.
Where is the blessing?
I am truly searching here.
Would you think it to be a blessing if you, your husband, your wife, your mother, your father, your kids, would receive the news from the man in a white coat. The news that you have an incurable disease. Wow,.that would hit anyone between the eyes. But the good man tells you, you may have this for the next 20 years before you die. Aha! Maybe there is the blessing, twenty years , we can handle that.

Not so fast, what if the person would know from in the beginning (most are too advanced by the time of diagnosis to understand) that he/she will be stripped of all control, stripped of their thoughts, stripped of their memories, stripped of all the tomorrows- no matter how long you will live.

What if you understood that you will spit and slobber while you eat? Would you still be thinking of that nice restaurant you once love? What is you knew that slowly the body functions are no longer registering in your mind, you need someone to clean you like when you were a baby, you need diapers.
How would the sick one think that was a blessing?
What if you could understand that the mild , loving person you always have been turns into a violent person, one who hits, scratches, screams. Would that ill person like to become that?

What would anyone think that they never want to be bathed, that water becomes the enemy and you fight with all your might not to be cleaned. Would that be a Blessing? -I think not-.
From experience we know that in that state of mind you accuse every soul around you as being a thief, everyone steals from you. Surely this paranoia can't be a blessing for you.
The stories continue , too many to mention, the years hang on. Near the end you forget how to swallow and slowly forget how to breathe. Would anyone in their right mind tell that person that he/she is blessed?

Then comes the blessings sent to me , the caregiver,because I am so lucky to still have a husband.
Ouch! I still have a husband? Think again. The man who walks here in this house does not know his wife, his children, his grandchildren, not even the dogs.
Often I am told to leave the bed, he does not sleep with strangers. Lately the hitting has started until we needed
stronger medicine, now he is just zombie like with a manic laugh. Everything now is a matter of laughing or yelling, no in between.
I was surprised when my water bill had doubled, why? I asked. It is not from all the showers he is taking, no dear caregiver it is from the daily changes of the soaking sheets towels and mattress covers. That is a pile of laundry every morning. The water company is blessed, the laundry lady is not very happy remaking and remaking a Queen size bed.
No, I would not call it blessed.

I could write a book about it all and not once would I have to admit that this was all a blessing. I do not give a hoot where you find that the word would fit, it does not fit for me nor for my husband who is now a walking stranger in his house.