still and unstill

my last several weeks have been the opposite of still. i have been tending to an ailing mother, our family’s beloved “gammy,” and it has meant doctor visits and emergency room runs and labwork and bloodwork and at least one impromptu session of self-taught insulin injecting at my childhood kitchen table. part of me wants to tune out, and just get through this time as helpfully and unobtrusively as i can. another part of me wonders what all of this chaotic energy could be channelled into, if i leaned into it. i will look back at this as a formative time of my life. what am i preserving of it, that will be recoverable when the chaos has returned to calm?