Wonderlust Productions' co-artistic directors Alan Berks and Leah Cooper spent two years gathering tales and observations from caregivers for their play, “Thank You for Holding: The Caregiver Play Project." (Jerry Holt/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
A few minutes into the scene on the park bench, the man mentions that he found himself caring for his wife quite unexpectedly. “I woke up one day to the reality that we don’t have as much control as we thought.”
Then he delivers a short monologue: “It’s part of our love story. She is always still exactly the same person to me. No matter what happens to her body, or mind. She is always a whole person, and I know she sees that I see her, and she feels less alone and less scared. It was unthinkable to me before that two people could be so intimately involved with each other. The things I now do for her — wiping her, dressing her. The things she allows me to do for her. The total trust it requires and love for her to allow me. The unconditional love we share, body, mind and spirit, and I feel this incredible reverence.”
Christin Lindberg recognizes that monologue. It contains some of her exact words.
Lindberg, a Minneapolis resident and research scientist for the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, participated in one of the story circles. She talked about being a caregiver for her late husband, Roger Bechtel.
Lindberg and Bechtel had been together just five years when he was diagnosed with ALS (often called Lou Gehrig’s disease). Bechtel died in 2021, just one grueling year after his diagnosis.
Lindberg joined the story circle at the suggestion of a member of Wonderlust’s board of directors, a former theater student of Bechtel’s at Carleton College in Northfield, who knew their back story.