It's one way of dealing with the writing on the wall, just not a good one. I should know
The sad truth is this: by the time you realize the situation with your elderly parents is a problem, it could already too late to plan. It’s trial by fire, learning on the job from this moment forward. You’re just left thinking, “when did they get so old?”
With time comes insight, however, and now I can sort of look back and see the beginning of the downward spiral for my parents that I wasn’t ready to accept. Here is the story of the time I should have seen my dad’s health was taking a turn, but waited a few more years to really accept it.
I went to visit my folks with my three-year-old son. As anyone who has ever been around a threenager knows, this is a huge undertaking. For us it meant flying across the country, dealing with a three-hour time difference, disrupting the schedule of a small and very change-averse human ; it’s all a special kind of hell. We arrived tired and disoriented to my parents’ house where my mother loudly and overwhelmingly greeted my sleepy toddler, who immediately burst into tears. Thanks, mom.
My dad was his usual pleasant self but moving slower than last time I’d seen him. We always had great talks, and this visit was no exception. One conversation we had was about an old lighthouse near them that my dad thought my son would like. It overlooked a beach where we’d spent a lot of time during my childhood, so we made a plan to go the next day.
The next morning, while I packed up a beach bag and got my son ready, my mom casually announced she’d decided she wasn’t going.
“Uh, ok,” I said, wondering if it would be a lot to manage my toddler and my maybe-not-so-steady father on this trek. What I should have said was, “Oh hell no, you are coming,” or at least cancelled the outing altogether, but I wasn’t that smart. That was just the first of several bad decisions that day.
We got to the beach, and I started to sweat, remembering how far it was from the parking lot to the actual beach, let alone the water’s edge.
“Let’s go to the bayside instead!” I said in a shrill voice. My dad, always wanting to be a good sport was game. Only the way to the bayside was rocky and slightly sloped. My three-year-old saw the water and beelined for it. My dad saw the rocks and remembered he probably should have mentioned he couldn’t feel his feet very much.
Have you ever let a small child get to a fun place only to immediately try to make them leave? They love that, let me tell you. I racked my brain for a better solution than dragging him kicking and screaming back to the car.
Beach chairs! I remembered I had beach chairs dangling off my arm. I set one up above the slope and asked my dad if he would mind just sitting up there for a few minutes to let my son play on the beach. He looked blankly at me, then down at the chair.
“I might be able to get into it,” he said, “but I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to get out of it.” Of course. What the hell was I thinking?
I stood between the two of them — my wobbly dad who probably wouldn’t be able to stand for much longer, and my gleeful child who probably shouldn’t be that close to a large body of water without me — and began to sweat more. I decided to walk my dad over to the NO LIFEGUARD sign so he’d have something to hold onto and ran towards my kid.
“Take your time!” my dad told me, not meaning a word of that. He really meant something like, “hurry up before I faceplant in the sand.”
I scooped up my son and dipped his toes in the water a couple of times, making him squeal. Then I did what any good mother would do in this situation: I promised him a boatload of sweets if he would be willing to leave. It took a little bit of time, during which I nervously kept one eye on my dad, but finally we left and headed for ice cream.
On real chairs planted on solid ground, my dad looked a lot more like his old self. I figured he had had enough excitement for one day, though, so thought we would skip the lighthouse and head home.
But no.
My dad started talking about it, telling my son we could go up into the top and see all the way to New York City from there.
“Let’s go!!” shouted the three-year-old as I wondered if it could really be as bad as I thought it was going to be. Seeing my sweet dad with my little boy gave me courage.
False courage.
The first flight of stairs was great. Wide. Nice railing. But after that, we spiraled up and up, and the stairs got narrower and narrower. I tried to focus on the conversation, but I was panicking. By the time we reached the top (and at our tortoise-like pace it took a long time), I was wondering if we were going to live through this.
I looked at my dad, and he looked as terrified as I felt.
“I think maybe this was a mistake,” he said with a little laugh, as if he was even remotely kidding.
“You ok, hon?” There was a woman with a thick Jersey accent looking at me as if she was afraid I was going to jump to my death. It was my turn to nervously laugh at the not at all funny situation.
“I actually have no idea how I’m going to get these two back down safely,” I admitted in a whispery, panicked voice.
“Anthony! Dom! Come heah!” She yelled, and two teenage boys who had been enjoying the view came running over. She seemed like the kind of mother whose kids knew was not to be messed with.
“Listen,” she told me, “My name’s Angela. You’re ok. We got you.” She quickly laid out the game plan. One son would go down first making sure anyone coming up gave us room to get back down. The other son held my dad’s arm. I was in charge of my son, and Angela brought up the rear, yelling out encouraging words now and then. Angela, I thought. An angel in leopard print pants.
In the end, thanks to the kindness of strangers, we all survived, and both my dad and my son napped the whole way home.
We left New Jersey thinking “ha ha, what a crazy adventure,” but only in hindsight did I realize it was more of a huge red flag. It would have been a really good time to start thinking about modifications we could make to the way my parents were living in order to keep them safe and realistic about what their limitations were. But I was just so glad we lived to tell the tale to face the reality of what it really meant.
It’s hard to be objective when it comes to recognizing the signs that your parents are getting older and need more help. I hope this story about the wrong way to deal with aging parents will help some people keep their eyes open for similar changes in their own parents. But probably most people who read it will remember the signs that they ignored, but that’s ok, too. Because the comfort of knowing you’re not alone during such a tough time in your life is really helpful, too.
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