Farting and burping, not unlike chewing with your mouth open, is something that is totally fine if you do it alone but when someone else is doing it in front of you, it’s disgusting. Especially when that person is a senior who might be driving you nuts for a few other reasons.
My mom used to burp so much that it felt like a habit, one designed specifically to get under my skin. I was recently in the position to reflect on this habit of hers when I found myself caring for another senior with a rough case of belching. I do not have PTSD but boy did this exercise drive home just how quickly one can be transported to a state of wild internal dysregulation with the flip of a seemingly innocuous switch.
For me there were two stages to the gas and my reaction to it. First was the stage when she was older but still functioning largely on her own, driving herself places and going to dinner with friends. This was the most bothersome stage of her active GI system. This is when her gas felt like the high point of hypocrisy. She would stand next to me as we were engaged in a mundane task, her hand often, and bizarrely, placed down the front of her pants, and she would loudly expel a wet burp or fart. I would say to her “MOM! Seriously?” and she would look me straight in the eye and say “What? I have stomach acid.” At times it felt like we were daring each other: she daring me to call her out and me daring her to pretend it wasn’t bad manners. Her frequent flatus ruffled my feathers mostly because of her near constant insistence on decorum throughout most of my time with her. We used to have to wear our dress clothes to fly on a plane. I still struggle when my kids want to wear sweats to fly, my moms disdain whispering in my ear “In my day personal pride still meant something.” Never mind that we also had to wear several layers of clothing on these flights so as to save money on checking extra luggage, that is a topic for another day.
This hypocrisy wasn’t unique to my mom and her gas. In my youth, my dad would go bananas if we used our utensils improperly but in his older years he would brazenly lay his knife in a bridge formation from table to plate like the street urchins he would accuse us of being should we have tried such a move. When confronted, naturally he had no memory of his previous preoccupation with table manners. Not unlike me now, he cared deeply about something, until he didn’t. My friend’s mother is currently walking around town without a front tooth, thinking nothing of it and shocked when her kids mention that she might want to fix it. Another friend’s dad releases stinky farts when driving and then gets upset when she rolls down the window to let in fresh air. “Stop being so dramatic- it’s not that bad” he says.
The second stage of passing gas with reckless abandon is when a senior is either sick or otherwise less in control of their day to day functioning. I would argue not that it is less gross but that it is more, shall we say, forgivable, as things have moved into another stage. When you are sick you certainly can’t help lots of things. When your mind and body are no longer strongly connected you shouldn't be held responsible for the disconnect. As a caregiver though, you don’t have to be happy about it and you can just gag internally.
It’s just a fact of life that seniors have more gas as they get older and it has to go somewhere. Slowed metabolism, decreased muscle mass and less effective digestion make for more bubbly guts. If your senior has a sensitive stomach and you have sensitive ears, I’d consider some earplugs- cause it’s not gonna get better.
I really hope that as I age I will recall and harness my internal triggers for my family’s benefit and at least make a blanket statement at the start of my gaseous phase- something to the effect of “I know this is gross and I’m doing it anyway.” An upside of aging is not caring about silly things that don’t matter, like gas. The downside is the people caring for you usually aren’t there yet so they are still grossed out.
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