Attending to Your Parents

This morning I went to the funeral for my friend C's mother. C has been an amazingly wonderful daughter; she lives in California but has visited often throughout the years, and with her mom's recent health troubles has been an incredible advocate for her. I've been so impressed by her. Even today at the funeral she was trying to make sure people were introduced to each there and comfortable.

It has struck me in the last week how many people I know are struggling with their parents' health and aging issues (if their parents are still alive.) I know people who have left jobs to care for their parents, have temporarily moved out of their family homes to live with and care for a parent, who are not as close by as they want to be and are finding other ways to check in. 

It's been a long time since I have had that as an issue to deal with, but it's not a feeling you forget. I remember the hours on the phone trying to solve things and get answers, the arriving at the hospital room early to catch the doctor on rounds, the stacks of work I constantly carried with me with hopes I could get a little done. The slight break you feel when your parent passes, because for just a minute it's easier to deal with the aftermath and a few days of bereavement leave than it was trying to take care of them while keeping up with everything else, or at least trying to.

Over ten years ago, I mused on going to the funerals of your friends' parents. How you have one sense of your friends' parents when you were young, and then at some point you realize how things have changed as you all have aged. I am older now than my mother was when I graduated from college — which is insane, because I was clearly in college just a few years ago.

And when they do pass, there's the complicated issue of their legacy. Maybe, like my friend Dan, you pay homage to a difficult relationship by holding an art show of their work (you have until this weekend to see it, and you should go). Maybe you get choked up in the new season of The Handmaid's Tale thinking about mothers and daughters. Maybe you are spending a lot of hours with your therapist figuring it out.

Which all is to say — if you're struggling to balance life helping out your parent, I see you. If your parent is gone and you miss them terribly, or it's just all settled into a dull ache, I get that too. If everything is rolling along perfectly with them, I'm a little jealous. It's all complicated, that's for sure.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WOOF

Image
No, not that kind of woof, unless you have a lead on a pomeranian that needs a home... I have declared this week my WOOF — Week Of Outstanding Filing. My friend Charles proves how well he knows my by commenting: But this is exactly why it is needed. On Saturday, most of my home office looked like this: Or, if stacked, this: After a few filing sessions, it now looks like this — definitely some room for improvement, but better. And after some similar time at a client's today, my in-box there, which had been too full to add anything more to, looks like this: In attending to this filing, which is definitely my Achilles heel, I am making some progress in the rest of my life. And that feels good.
Read more

(At)tend

Image
So Patrick and I just finished our #yearcompass books (which got delayed for all kinds of reasons this year, the main part being when Quickbooks Online locked me out for days and I had to rebuild everything, but I digress. The final part of the process is to set your word for the year — so much better than a resolution. Last year, my word was BUILD, and I do think I spent a lot of the year building in many ways — physical projects, building clients, building relationships... This year, my word was going to be GROW. But *maybe* in this case the delay was good. Because I don't know if I can dedicate myself to growing in 2025. I might just need to try to stay sane. (and also I had a tarot session on New year's Eve that did not make "Grow" seem like the best choice.) So after a lot of back and forth, my word became "ATTEND," and I like that a lot. Attend more performances, and art. Attend parties and events. Attend to friendships and relationships. Attend to the...
Read more

House on the Rock vs. Taliesin

Image
When I was young, my dad took me to House on the Rock . I never understood why he took me there, and not to Taliesin at the same time...until this trip. The first garden at HOTR Taliesin There's a story (since proved wrong, for any number of reasons), that Alex Jordan built HOTR because he wanted Frank Lloyd Wright to collaborate on a house and Wright refused. But that contrast stayed in my mind this trip. Though House on the Rock has some cozy spaces in the house itself... ...it's really about the show, the razzle-dazzle. In fact, one thing that we learned about the house is that Jordan only ever spent 4 nights in the house ever. he built it as a showcase, as a tourist attraction. And it succeeds, even though it's kind of exhausting. It's also a place for him to showcase all of his collections, from carousels to dollhouses to firearms to cars to jewelers models to musical rooms to full-built towns. I think my dad aspired to that, though all he really seemed to collect...
Read more