‘Honor thy father and mother’ in old age, too

Along with many of my friends, I have reached the age where we are dealing with the same concern. — aging parents that need our care. Those of us in our mid-to-late fifties are dealing with parents who are in their eighties. As believers we know that we must “honor our father and mother” by taking care of them now that they need us more often.

The parents that fed you, clothed you, and took care of you now need you to take care of them...but this is not always as easy as it sounds. I want to address some of the issues I see on my horizon along with ones I’ve seen my friends having to address.

The sad fact is that some children and parents grew apart or intentionally stayed apart due to emotional necessity. Not all parents are easy to get along with and sometimes this forces children to move away physically and emotionally. If a child didn’t get along with a parent growing up then this can make taking care of them when they are older more of a challenge. Thankfully I had really great parents whom I had no need of avoiding. If possible, make amends and forgive your parents before you have to care for them in later years.

The memory trail

Another factor is Alzheimers or dementia. Once a parent begins to go down the trail of losing their memory, it’s very difficult to relate to them. Even if they don’t have dementia there is definitely memory loss that occurs more frequently. My wife’s aging grandmother couldn’t remember my name but called me by my father-in-law’s name, to which I would answer. When she would become agitated I found that singing songs from her era calmed her down. Once dementia becomes full-blown you are dealing with a child in a grown-up body.

With aging there is the inevitable decline in the body as well. Many seniors are on several medications with which you as their caregiver will need to become acquainted. Today we live in a world where there is a medication for everything and surgeries for just about everything. My own mother had two knee replacement surgeries in her early eighties and the recovery from those was grueling. Once a parent can no longer walk, or only walk for a few minutes at a time, they have to have someone help them on a regular basis. The progression is cane, walker, and then wheelchair.

Another issue is where aging parents will live. Most parents want to stay in their home as long as possible and that is optimum. But sometimes their home is not conducive to their advanced age. My mother’s condominium is very nice, but it has stairs that have become increasingly difficult for mom to climb. My wife is a geriatric nurse and works with numerous nursing homes that care for the elderly. I completely understand why some children put their parents in a nursing home as their parents need nursing care that they cant’ provide.

Assisted living

My daughter worked in a beautiful assisted living home that allowed for a great deal of independence while still having some nursing care if needed. The other option is to have an aging parent move in with you, but this creates numerous challenges as well. My in-laws built onto their home so they could take care of aging parents and this worked well but not everyone has this ability.

Hopefully adult children have some siblings that can share the responsibility of taking care of aging parents. Here again you hope that the siblings can get along and actually step up to help.

There is a family I know of currently where the siblings do not get along and this has made caring for their mother very difficult. I have seen situations where one adult child did all the heavy lifting taking care of an aging parent while the other siblings did nothing to help. As you can imagine this creates bitterness and resentment. If siblings can share the load in helping out it really does keep care givers from getting burned out.

As you can see, there are a lot of bumps in the road but don’t have the answers for how to smooth them out. Every parent is different and every family is different so there is no one solution. I do want to serve my mom in her later years but admittedly I don’t know what doing that is going to look like.

I know that God wants me to honor my mom by making sure I do everything I can to help her when she can’t help herself. I hope God gives me the grace and wisdom to navigate this part of life as I want to make sure I do my part to make her last years as problem-free as possible.

Brent Emery leads Congregation Beit Tefillah of Gig Harbor. Reach him at torah4today@comcast.net

This story was originally published July 14, 2020 at 12:00 AM.