Caregiving
The Challenges of Aging Parents:
As my parents have aged, and moved into more dementia (yes, both of them), my sibs and I have gone from frequent visits to their midwestern town, where they were beloved, to far more regular caregiving. In a herculean effort, we managed to pack up them and 15 suitcases of their most important belongings and get them on a plane to California, sans urinary accidents and protestations about leaving the home they had known for 60 years. Getting them situated in their veeerrry patient new home at an assisted living facility near my sister and me has been an adventure of a different sort.
“Why did you sell my home? What are you doing with our money?” Mom. About 100 times.
“Why can’t I walk out at any time and go for a walk?! I have been a hiker and hunter my whole life… you can see why it would be difficult to understand why I would need someone to walk with me?!” Dad. About 100 times. After being chased out of the facility for the 6th time that day.
“Oh, no, we don’t drink.” Average of 4 drinks a day gone out of their stash.
“I never eat dessert.” Mrs. Ice cream sundae with caramel sauce at every meal, now needing to let out her pants.
“They never fed us lunch!” After consuming second round lunch.
“What? You live here too? Near our hotel? We’re deciding when to buy our plane ticket home.”
The time it takes to intervene personally, hygienically, medically is one thing. And the stress of them getting kicked out due to bad behavior is another. But the stealth difficulty for me has been having my parents in my hometown (where, tbh, I moved 34 years ago to get away from them). I love them. SO much. And am grateful. But the casting of my family of origin shadow over my current existence just after my own kids are grown and gone, has been a spiritual/psychological challenge of epic unconscious proportions.
Add to this year my daughter’s neurosurgery, my son’s traumatic brain injury, my husband’s dual accidents with multiple broken bones, and my caregiving giver is running on empty. I found myself driving along the ocean cliffs of my home before work one morning wanting to drive off of them. I turned inland to avoid the temptation and called my sister (my blessed caregiving partner). I didn’t want to actively kill myself. I just wanted to be taken out by a natural disaster. I didn’t like or want my life anymore.
Instead of Prozac, I decided to leave the country for a few weeks. Turns out the severe depression was actually situational. Once away from all those I love, I’m happy. And there is the challenge. How to be in intimate contact with my family and find my own piece of happiness real estate. How to resist the invitation to move back into the sometimes dark place I inhabited in my family of origin. How to love with psychic boundaries. To be honest and continue to ask for what I want. To take the now extra time I now need to find my own purpose and boundaries while caregiving my parents.
I want so much to help them have happiness and belonging and a gentle exit from this life. I just need to do so in a way that doesn’t have me seeking the exit door with them.
These are my new strategies:
If they are physically safe, I should not visit them when I am angry or resentful.
They are really done parenting. What they say or do at this sunset of their life has little to do with me. They’re on their own soul journey.
I need WAY MORE time alone or creating or playing with friends than I have before. This requires pre-planning of time to create or pray or cry in solitude.
When happiness occurs…. Embrace it! Ride it the whole way out… dance, laugh, swear, whatever strikes my fancy. All emotions come in waves. Revel in the ones that are fun. Let the grief and anger and sadness wash over me. It is not necessary to always make sense of it.
Find freedom in all of my relationships. No room for co-dependence here. As a mother, wife, doctor, sister, daughter, I sense and communicate my own needs first, and then find open generosity when I give to others. I take full responsibility for my own experience. No dutiful giving. No resentment or blame.
And a new focus on PLAY. I lean into anything that makes me free and joyful. My current favorites: Dancing. Playing Music. Beach volleyball. Art. Gardening. A really good IPA.
I feel myself being worked in this process. My parents loved and fed and raised me and changed my diapers and it feels right to be doing the same for them at their exit out. I am leaning into this soul cleansing path and finding new freedom for myself in all my relationships—as a necessity. And staying away from the cliffs and calling a sister or friend when needed.