By Louise R. Shaw

When you're outside looking in, you can see the beauty of it.

When you're inside, it is anything but.

Many of my friends are experiencing the heart-stretching task of caring for an aging parent. Or in some cases, a struggling spouse.

The decisions they face are emotionally draining. The tasks that have unexpetedly fallen on them are equally so.

You just don't expect that the one who has cared for you your entire life will instead be needing your care.

Nor would anyone ever think that the person they fell in love with and shared years raising a family and exploring the world with, would have trouble remembering how many children are in their family.

Nor would you anticipate that giving care may mean taking away the keys to their car and thus their independence. Or that getting them help might mean taking them to a place they really truly don't want to be.

As my friends have shared their stresses with their stories, I have seen the worry in their eyes, but I have also seen the beauty in their love and their sacrifices.

It happened once before, when I saw a different viewpoint by looking through a different lens.

I was a young mother and struggling with being overwhelmed at the same time that I was over-worked and over-tired.

It didn't seem I would ever get a full night's sleep. It didn't seem I would ever be able to have cereal that wasn't soggy. It didn't seem I would ever have an uninterrupted shower or a relaxed dinner.

And then I saw the picture in the magazine.

It was a picture of a woman holding a sleeping child. Light was coming through the window as she held him. He was wrapped in a warm quilt. Her cheek rested against the mussed-up hair on his forehead and her eyes were lost in thought but at peace.

It was the kind of thing I had been doing every night, but I had been thinking it was work.

I had been thinking getting up at night and holding a fussy child was a huge sacrifice.

Through the picture, I saw it instead, as a meaningful act of love.

We can never claim to fully grasp the struggles those dealing with aging or ailing family members are facing. We see only just a bit of it in the experiences they share.

We are outside looking in.

But the love we can see in their worries and their sacrificies... is its own kind of beauty.

This column first appeared in the Davis Journal on July 9, 2021.