On a Repurposed Life
I noticed the bottle one afternoon while cleaning out the refrigerator. Dark glass. A narrow neck. It must have been the kind of bottle you don’t throw away right away because it held something worth remembering. I turned it in my hand and read the label: 2014. That was, by all accounts, a very good year. I remember receiving it now, who we were with, and the unspoken assumption that there would be many more like it.
At the time, I would have told you this was how a life was supposed to work. You laid things down carefully; you let them age, and you trusted that, when the moment came, you would know how to pour. That bottle belonged to a different life, one designed for long evenings and unhurried company, for the clink of glasses meeting midair and the smell of woodsmoke threaded through conversations about the future. All my yesterdays were so full of tomorrows.
And as I stare at the bottle, an unfounded guilt starts to gather.
Not the guilt of having broken something, but of having misused it. As though a life without a medically complex child could be opened fully and savored without interruption. Not necessarily a life without hardship, but hardships born lightly and moved through expediently. Before, I thought that suffering must be done nobly, with a composed voice and steady hands. Could life be measured based on what it actually holds and not just what I wanted it to hold? The bottle was never ruined after all; it just isn’t holding what it once promised to hold. I set it on the counter and kept cleaning.
Standing in front of the open fridge now, the analogy continues to unfold. The bottle is still sound, the glass uncracked. The wine held fast by an undamaged cork. The label remains crisp and legible, displaying, in my mind, so much more than year and vineyard. It is announcing a whole life built of the expectations of that younger version of myself.
Like so many years ago, I again did not throw the bottle away. This time, instead of returning it to the fridge, I rinsed it out, letting the water run until the last traces of the old vintage were gone. I peeled back the label slowly, careful not to rip apart the memories it contained. What remained was simpler than what had been promised.
The bottle, and the life that it represents, is not a failure. It has been repurposed, it is a vase now.
The admission lands with less drama than I may have expected. A vase is a modest thing. It does not hold intoxicating promises. It is meant to stay put, to be stable, to hold without calling attention to its own design. Before, I imagined myself a full bottle, offering something rich and expansive. I have become more like the vase, holding something much simpler yet necessary to keep something precious alive.
The world still demands the mindset of that former self though. It shows up in many areas of my life. My career that rewards the privilege of consistent momentum. The friendships that aren’t as easy to maintain now that I’m always requesting accommodations. The invitations to travel, the asks to show up, to say yes, all while having to calculate what it will cost at home. Conversations still open with What’s next? as though the future were a neutral resource. Even praise for me as a caregiver is spoken in the old grammar, with phrases that call me impressive, productive, or busy.
I’ve come to realize that the ache of who I once imagined I would become doesn’t fade just because I’ve given my role a new name. The world is still calling, regardless of my positive reframing. The sense that a life once forecast with confidence has come in under expectation reverberates even in the smallest moments, like when a friend texts to ask if I can meet for coffee, as though they are reaching for the older version of me. I have spent so much time living as though the person I might have been is here now, waiting for me to explain myself.
It has been an ongoing challenge for me to shift my understanding of what I want my life to look like now that my days are dictated by the needs of a medically complex child. And though I am no longer full of the vivacious libations I once was, neither am I empty. I now hold what is necessary for those that cannot survive without me. I am a vessel for a life that no longer photographs well, but that quietly persists. I have found mercy in letting my life as a caregiver be what it is without demanding it justify the change.
To live as the vase is to stop apologizing for not becoming the person I might have been. It is to acknowledge the uncomfortable certainty that I am the parent I have needed to become, and to understand that this is not a moral failure. The bottle was altered by necessity, not neglect. Life was altered by love.
Stephen Hager goes by his second middle name (he has three), Bud, because it’s easier to remember and baristas never misspell it. Along with his wife he is a caregiver for their 8-year-old daughter, Emma, who has pachygyria, a rare neurological disorder. He believes in taking an active approach to advocating for his child and others like her. To this end, he sits on various advisory councils at Children Hospital of Orange County (CHOC), volunteers on consulting and directing boards for various non-profit centers and lends his writing skills where he can. Experiencing a lack of support for parents of medically complex children, Bud founded a support group through CHOC focusing on parent-to-parent interaction. He is also a professor of psychology and has a small private psychotherapy practice.