Stream of Consciousness or How Do You Deal With Your Parent’s Mortality?

Posted by danleone on June 29th, 2007 filed in writing

I know this is a depressing topic, but it is what is on my mind. Unfortunately, being an insomniac, makes me wake up at all hours and allows me to start my day way too early. Of course, I will crash just before having to leave for work. Healthy.

I am actually typing this blog outside under my father’s grape arbor. It is dark and relatively quiet. I know, but cannot prove, that there is a raccoon watching me not 20 feet away so I am beginning to get nervous. I live on a typical busy residential street in Boston so I hear the occaisional delivery truck roar by and am instantly awed at how my kids ever learned to sleep at all here.

It is one billion degrees with a humidity of wet and the clouds are sitting on me. I wish the stars were out. The only advantage to being awake at odd hours is that I get to look at the stars, both of them. I LOVE astronomy. I used to pride myself on remembering the constellations and the mythology of their names. Now, I am lucky to remember the names of about 6 constellations. I could point out individual stars and name them and awe no one with a description of their size or distance. I used to be able to speak in terms of light years and solar systems. I am really good at the “used to be’s.” In fact, the older I get, the better I used to be. My son and I enjoy an occaisional night out where I point out some of the obvious constellations such as Orion, Ursa Major and Minor and my favorite constellation (whatever that means), Scorpio. Scorpio is best viewed in the Summer months and early in the morning. The heart of Scorpio is the giant red star, Antares. It is the absolutely enormous and the first astronomy fact that I ever learned growing up was that if you brought Antares here, it would easily swallow our sun, and the orbits of all the inner planets (up to Mars)! If our sun were the size of the period at the end of this sentence, Antares would be roughly the size of a large softball. I can point it out in a matter of seconds in the sky. I cannot tell you how often that star has guided me on my early morning runs. I don’t believe in astrology any more than I believe in the boogey man, but the reputation of Scorpios of being passionate must have something to do with that giant red heart, Antares.

[OK, now I am inside as whatever pair of eyes that were staring at me took on a haunted glow]

As I sit here I am thinking of an image I recently witnessed with my parents. As far as I am concerned, my parents are immortal. At least that is what I believed until recently. My mom, who is only in her 60s has had trouble with her knees lately. She has arthritis and they swell up causing terrific pain. She works behind a deli counter at one of the local supermarkets which cannot help her knees any. My parents live in the upstairs apartment and as I was leaving for work, she was coming down the stairs. But the sound of her steps were different than the usual sound. I looked up and noticed that she has taken to coming down the stairs backwards, one step at a time. She told me it was easier on her knees.

When I went to visit her that same day, I noticed that the couch in the TV room was physically higher off the ground. It turns out that since she was having issues getting off the couch, my father placed these raisers under each leg. This is making it easier for my mom to lift herself.

So here I am, faced with something I have never had to deal with; the slow drum beat of time as we begin accommodating our physical degradation. When we are younger, we fight that process. We work out harder, scramble to eat better and schmear creams on our face to “defy aging.” But at some point, in our 60s, 70s, 80 or later, we can no longer fight. We resolve ourselves to our fate and the best we can hope for is to accommodate the dying process. We try to make it more comfortable as we tuck ourselves in before our really, really long sleep.

I am reaching out to BoMR (Both of My Readers). How do you handle this? Are your parents still alive? How do you face the reality that your parents are mortal? Do you embrace it, accept it, ignore it or try to help fight it? Is part of it the fact that you see yourself in your parents?

As always, I am eternally grateful all your wonderful, thoughtful comments.

Have fun…Time to go to bed now!

Dan


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4 Responses to “Stream of Consciousness or How Do You Deal With Your Parent’s Mortality?”

  1. terri Says:
    June 29th, 2007 at 5:13 am

    This is a tough one. My parents are also in their 60s and have aged much too rapidly for my liking. I’m big on denial. That’s how I get through the rough times. But I think a small part of me is also trying to prepare for the fact that they won’t be around forever. No matter what you do, it’s never easy.

  2. sophie Says:
    June 29th, 2007 at 10:52 pm

    My mother was just 6 years older than I am now when she died. It was sudden and unexpected. I couldn’t give anyone any clues to dealing with that kind of loss, except the reassurance that eventually it will suck less than it does to start with. My father is 66 years old and very healthy. He has said for more years than I can remember, “You can put me in a home, but you better come visit me.” I hope it doesn’t come to that. He and I both know how fortunate we are that his health is as good as it is. Even with the past experience with my mother, I wouldn’t dare predict how I will deal with his death.

    As for the aging, I think I may do okay with that, given that I know that my parents are mortal, and that I have seen so much through my job.

  3. Meg Says:
    July 5th, 2007 at 3:34 am

    My mother passed away when I was 21 but not before we became best friends and she was able to instill in me the wisdom of all her 54 years. My father is now 88 and lives with me and my family. He takes no meds but now has a degenerative brain disorder that affects his speech and mobility. I made a promise to my Dad that he would never end up in a nursing home. If this means I quit my job, I will. God knows he made enough sacrifices for me when I was young. Death is as inevitable as taxes. YOu can cheat the taxman but death will find you eventually. (Come to think of it, so will the taxman unless you are a master opf disguise and deception). When your parents age, you feel your own mortality. I often wonder what my girls think as they see their grandfather and parents age. I feel sad for my father that he can’t get around like he used to but we sure do have fun when we take him out in his wheelchair and terrorize neighbourhood. Look death in the face – and laugh. Not much else you can do!!

  4. Fox Says:
    August 12th, 2008 at 10:29 am

    Like you, I suffer from insomnia…I’ve had it since I was a kid. Sometimes I’ll go for several days without sleeping at all. Growing up, I was never able to pin point what it was that kept me up at night. As an adult, I know…it’s this very thing. The mortality of my parents. It’s the one thing that will always make me cry.

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