Caring for Mom and Dad
The hardest job you'll ever have...
Angels are walking among us. Perhaps you are one yourself. They are the ones caring for their elderly parents: gently washing a mother’s back and nether regions, leaving work in the middle of the day to drive a father to his weekly physical therapy appointment, and calling doctors, caregivers, and siblings to discuss the latest prognosis.
No halos or silver wings in this crowd. More often they’re sitting somewhere with their head between their knees or in the bedroom silently screaming at their brothers or sisters who haven’t stepped up. These angels are human after all. Because honestly, no matter how much love there is for mom or dad, caring for elderly parents is hard, hand-wringing, soul-sucking hard. As a good friend who’s caring for her parents recently told me,
“It is a lot to juggle with work, my family, and my own life. I feel like I sort of lost the whole last year.”
Caring for my elderly mom meant carving out time on Sunday afternoons to visit her at her retirement home. Sometimes I’d coax her into a wool sweater – even in summer, she was cold – stow her walker in my SUV and drive to Denny’s, where we’d share a slice of banana cream pie. On other days, she was content to lie in her recliner underneath her favorite mohair blanket. I’d pull up a chair and pull at threads of conversation, trying to elicit some sort of response. Caring for Mom meant attending frequent mid-day conferences with her doctor, nutritionist, and art therapist who’d update me on her medications, meal plans, and social interactions. Those were good days. The ones that only required me to show up physically.
Plenty of days, though, were not only physically exhausting but so emotionally draining that I felt like a used sponge tossed in the sink. Days when I had to leave work suddenly or cancel dinner plans with friends – again – to meet my mom in the ER. I’d enter the exam room and find her lying on a stretcher, dehydrated and babbling deliriously as she battled another undiagnosed UTI. Days when I had to cancel family vacations to coordinate my mom’s move from Knoxville, Tennessee to Portland, Oregon, or admit her to a geriatric psych hospital. Those were the days when plans and schedules careened out from under me like a tablecloth full of dishes pulled to the floor.
Resentful much? Oh yea. I burned with resentment towards my brothers and sister who had carried on with their lives at opposite ends of the country and globe.
The weight of responsibility in caring for my mom nearly broke me – if not my mind and body – then my heart. Our roles had shifted, and I was exhausted by the intensity of this new journey we’d embarked on. I tried balancing what I thought was best for my mom with her opinions. Fear was an unwelcome backseat driver. I wondered constantly if I was doing the right thing. For my mom, the fear was even greater. A fear born out of both the certainty that she was heading towards a loss of control, of dignity, of life and the uncertainty of how she would get there. There wasn’t much room on this trip for my own needs or those of my family.
I was in the driver’s seat now, but I couldn’t forget who had taught me to drive. She could still navigate, but which one of us would get to choose the route? Moving my mom from the community where she’d lived for 40 years to a new city where I lived was a huge decision for both of us. At the recommendation of a friend, I chose a retirement facility close to my home.
“You’ll see your mom a lot more if you don’t have to drive miles out of the way to do it,” she cautioned.
My mom, though, felt more comfortable at a place thirty minutes from my home, so that’s where she moved. In the end, my friend was right. It would have been easier for me to drop in for casual visits had my mom lived closer. But, there’s also this: my mom was really happy with her new home.
Then there were the decisions around doctors, health care, and medications. My mom had dementia, so when her kidneys failed, I wasn’t in favor of prolonging treatment. There were a lot of tough conversations between my sister and me in trying to decide what to do. We both thought we knew best what our mother would have wanted even though she didn’t get a say. Who was right?
A college friend told me she wanted to change her parents’ doctors and have them sign up for outings with their retirement home. They pushed back on both issues. They still wanted to steer their own lives, and who’s to say they weren’t right?
It’s painful to watch a parent struggle with what were once simple tasks: showering, dressing, even eating, knowing that, unlike a small child, these are not signposts of development, but rather of decline. My mom, who had stood proudly on the summit of Mt. Rainier the year she turned fifty, needed help getting out of her recliner and going to the bathroom at 89. My friend’s father, once a respected small-town lawyer, had to be spoon-fed. We want so much for our parents to get better. To be our parents once again. Instead, we’re left wondering what’s around the next bend – an inability to live alone? To remember who we are?
There is a silver lining to caring for our elderly. It’s the privilege of giving back to them what they gave us when we were small but with an added measure of compassion and dignity. I was so caught up in the emotional and physical exhaustion required in caring for my mom, that I didn’t often think of how to make the journey more compassionate, dignified, and joyful. I wish I’d taken the time to get to know who she was at this stage of her life rather than view our visits as something to check off a to-do list.
There’s another thing, too. Caring for my mom spurred me to look more realistically at my own aging. My friend agrees. Focusing on her parents has left her exhausted and, by her admission, feeling like she lost a year of her life. It also made her realize that she can no longer deny she’s getting older. My friend asks her children for confirmation that they’ll care for her when the time comes. Not me. My own experience made me realize that I did not want to be a burden to my children. I’m still trying to figure out what that looks like.
I’m no angel. I cared for my mom for five years and then told my siblings it was their turn.
“Van and I are quitting our jobs and backpacking around South America for eight months,” I said. “Figure it out.” I felt guilty for walking away. But, martyr has never been a good look on me, and my guilt had an ugly twin named resentment. As it turned out, they stepped up in ways that I never imagined, and I gladly gave them well-deserved silver wings and halos.