Not on my watch

 The work of caregiving does not take time off. The caregiver cannot take time off, either. I say to myself, "Not on my watch". That is, nothing is going to happen to my Mom on my watch. This way, if anything happens, I will not be blamed, I will not be responsible, and I will not have to live with the guilt and shame of failure.

But the reality of this work is that I am responsible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There is no shift change. There is no Supervisor. There is no one giving instructions for me to carry out. There is no one carrying out someone else's instructions. 

All inquiries, decisions, and implementations redound to me. I am responsible for the care of my Mother, and that includes the care that leads to her life eventually ending.

So I say to myself, "Not on my watch." But in reality, whatever happens with my Mom is going to happen on my watch as long as I am her caregiver.

The fallacy I tell myself is that there is a watch, that sometimes it is my watch, and I am going to be vigilant that nothing will happen to her on my watch. I apply vigilance on my watch, but then my watch never ends, I am never off duty, I am never off my watch which means I am constantly vigilant that nothing should happen to Mom 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for more than a year. This vigilance turns into a mindset, a constant attention to detail that cannot be turned off because, "Not on my watch."