Everyone in New England (including my family) is watching the Patriots win again but I’m writing a blog. I can’t get my Dad off my mind.
That’s because he’s lying in his hospital bed, breathing through a tube and slowly dying. This afternoon, he motioned for me to come closer so he could whisper a secret: “Getting old is horrible”. No doubt, I thought. But forever the challenging child, I told him that as far as I could tell, living to age 87 has been a pretty good ride.
It’s allowed him to watch 6 grandchildren grow up and even get to know and love a great grandson. He’s lived with the same woman whom he really has adored for 65 years. Very few of his friends and family have gotten this far.
And that’s when I realized that Dad does have it wrong — but not for the reason I kept giving him all these years when he’d tell me that secret over and over again. It’s not getting old that’s inheritently bad. It’s being sick and increasingly disabled and now in a near death state.
At 87, he has diabetes, congestive heart failure, his mind operates about 10% of the time and now he’s so sick we can’t get him well enough to go home to die.
Many years ago, in one of my last conversations with my grandmother, she said to me,”You can’t imagine how bad this is. I hope you never have to go through this (implying living to 90 years old).” She didn’t know I had MS, had lived with blindness for a brief time, been bedridden on several occasions and periodically lost control of my bodily functions. How could she know how easy it was to imagine her life. That I knew that her misery wasn’t confined to the elderly.
It seems to me that old people who have been healthy all their lives seem to think that bad health only happens to the old. But ask anyone who lives with debilitating chronic illness (that leaves you feeling like you’re 80 when you’re only 25) and they’ll tell you it’s blatantly not true. Bad health is age blind.
I feel sad for my Dad who was always one of the most positive and upbeat people I knew. By the time he got sick, he was too set in his ways to develop the muscles he needed to get through this with more grace and ease. He couldn’t adjust to this loss.
He always told me that I did a fantastic job dealing with illness. Maybe he was so proud of how I dealt with my physical challenges because he knew that he wouldn’t be able to do it himself.
How do your your aging/debilitated/ dying parents respond to poor health? How do you respond to them when you’re living with chronic illness?
COMMENT PLEASE — if you read a post, have something to say, want to share your thoughts – please do ! Your comments make a big difference regarding how much this blog is picked up by search engines. And the more readers, the more we build community. So please write in! With hundreds of subscribers, I figure some of you must be reading this and have some reponse.
Mark says
Wonderful article and message.
So sorry to hear about your dad.
Rosalind says
Thanks, Mark.
KAren says
I constantly battle my illness and some of the things that might make it easier to cope. I am now watching my 87 year old mom fight every step of the way. I hope i am learning from her to give in a littl e more gracefully.
SHe will accept no help, no prescriptions, and is depressed and somewhat unpleasant to be around. She feels giving up anything means giving up part of herself. So, she turns down invitiations, turns down offers of help, and sits at home alone out of fear a bathroom won’t be close by.
My family would rather have less of her struggle and more of her company. I think that is true of my friends, too.
Let them do things for me. At least I can be there to share their time and company. Adaptation doesn’t have to be an awful word. It is a good skill to develop.
Rosalind says
Dear Karen- boy, does your story resonate. It’s too bad that we have to look at bad role modes to know what we don’t want to be. I couldn’t agree more, though. Nothing good comes from withdrawing from others — it just makes you more miserable and frustrate others. People actually like to help others and you’ll know when it becomes a burden. In my experience, it really is harder to give than to receive. Rosalind
Annabel says
The way my father handled his dying and old age was an inspiration to me. Before he got sick he went to the Jewish Center Health club regularly to work out – up to just before his congestive heart failure at 91. He was their oldest member.
When he found out he was dying, he told me that he hadn’t expected to live this long, and that he had done everything he wanted to do during his life. When he was so sick that he had to have care givers with him everyday, he still demanded when they came in “What are we going to do today?”. He was happy even if they just took him for a walk in his wheel chair or to a doctor’s appointment or to a store for a short errand.
He died when he was 92. He wanted of course to live longer, but he accepted death gracefully.
I believe it’s easier to accept old age and death if you’ve done everything you can to live life to its fullest, for however long you have or whatever your capabilities.
Rosalind – so sorry about your father.
Rosalind Joffe says
Your story only reinforces my own belief that we die the way we lived. In your father’s case, it was gracefully and with acceptance. The best news is that he’ll be remembered that way. How lucky he was that he could be that person. Thanks for the kind words, Annabel.
Rosalind
Carol Jaquith says
Hi
This is a great article. Sorry about your Dad.
I feel I do pretty darn good coping with my CFIDS I tryto make the quality of my life the best I can, be as productive as I can, enjoy what I can, see the good in my life, – yet when someone like my sister-in-law says – it is horrible getting old (she is dealing with some arthritis and other issues that can be treated) I tend to get sucked back into feelling sorry for myself. I want to say to her try getting old at 40 (or 20 in the case of m y neice)? I have to shake it off and continue trying to do the best I can. Truth be known the best I can is pretty darn good even if the world can’t see it!
Carol
Rosalind says
Hi Carol – Glad this resonated with you — and thanks for the kind words about my Dad. He’s actually better and in rehab … my sister says he’s got 72 lives!
People say the darndest things, don’t they? How do you manage to do the best you can? What do you tell yourself to keep that attitude going? Rosalind