Our Parents Are All Okay (As I Write), But Are We?
I was pulling out of my driveway last week to head over to my friend Deanne’s for a last minute dinner invitation when I got this text from her: “Squash that. My Dad was just rushed to the hospital with signs of a stroke. I’m racing to Logan for last flight out tonight to PBI.”
Deanne was going to show me how to make her version of a Blistered Broccoli Pasta, which she says is better than the five-star Blistered Broccoli Pasta with Walnuts, Pecorino & Mint from NYT Cooking, which I had sent her earlier that day because she is the only person I know who loves broccoli. As in, doesn’t just tolerate broccoli like the rest of us, but actually loves it. “For one thing,” she had responded (by text) after reading the recipe, “I sauté anchovies in olive oil first to give it umami.” To which I replied “and then you put the walnuts, or the broccoli, or both, into the umami’d oil? Or do you sauté the walnuts and the broccoli separately?” To which she replied “why don’t you just come over for dinner tonight and I’ll show you?“ (This is a trick I often use with her, because she’s a very good cook and she cooks often, and also because it works: I ask her a question about how to make something and then, surprise, surprise!, she invites me over to demonstrate. She’s probably on to me, but if so, god bless her, she’s not letting on.)
(Getting back on point,) two days before that my friend Sarah cancelled a planned dinner to celebrate my birthday because her father-in-law had a heart attack. (“Really tough,“ she wrote, “because my Mother-in-law has Alzheimer’s …)
Oof.
The second week of July my friend Paul, who bought an apartment for his mother after his father passed away, which apartment is a four block walk from Paul’s office, asked to reschedule lunch because his mother‘s nurse had called to say that his mother hadn’t gotten out of bed that morning. “Hopefully nothing serious, but I need to check on my Mom.” (Turns out, it was serious. She was barely breathing when he arrived and he rushed her to the hospital.)
The previous week, just after July 4th, over dinner with two girlfriends, I was asking them about upcoming summer trips. My friend Kathy responded with, “I have to fly from Boston to Tampa tomorrow, then drive my Mom from Tampa back to her home in Indianapolis. She broke her femur over the winter and had to stay in Florida … “ “Tampa to Indianapolis in July?” asked my other friend, Lisa, “Why now?” “Yeah, well, she shouldn’t be going now because she could re-injure herself getting in and out of the car, etc., but she threatened to drive herself if either my sister or I didn’t take her.” Lisa, whose mother had six months earlier fallen while going down stairs that the doctor told her not to walk down (or up) nodded firmly, knowingly.
“Got it,” Lisa said. “That sucks.”
Many of my friends are at an age where our parents are in their 80’s and 90’s. Our parents’ health, how we are managing it (and how they are ignoring their doctors’ orders) has become a central theme when we sit down together to catch up.
My own parents’ health is touch-and-go. I (and my parents) are blessed that my sister moved in with them less than a year ago (after — you’ll recall — her husband recently passed away), but Koko and I have been staying over 2-3 nights a week to pitch in, plus darting up on a moment’s notice for emergencies. Over the last year my father has been in and out of the hospital four or five times with critical breathing issues; my mother had a stroke.
As of this moment, all our (mine and my friends‘) respective parents are doing okay. But are we? On the one hand, we all rush to say how lucky we are to still have them, how blessed the time is that we spend with them, how honored we are to care for them. We mean it. And, on the other hand, we have all finally admitted to ourselves and each other that it is so much harder than we were prepared for, emotionally and logistically. We’ve admitted to being in sustained states of stress, worry and fatigue, which is impacting our own health, sleep and relationships.
I, of course (as CRUSH Readers know), lost my husband over a decade ago after years of his battling illness, so I am in the unenviable club of caretakers who have provided long-term, sometimes acute, care to a loved one whose health is in a prolonged state of undeniable decline.
As with my late husband, we all hope that this period of stress, worry and fatigue lasts for years. Which is to say, that we want our parents with us for many more years.
We all want to hold up to all this, for however long it takes.
Sometimes when I go into my Mother’s bedroom on a morning when she is clearly not doing well I feel myself go a little numb, bracing myself for the worst. Her discomfort is painful to witness, and she clearly feels shame over her diminished competencies. On top of that there are layers of emotional complexity with the turning of the tables on caretaking, both for her and for me. “I’m fine, honey,” she says, even though she’s clearly not. I rearrange her covers anyway just to feel like I’m doing something.
I’m not even getting into the emotional complexities of negotiating parental care among siblings who each have a different relationship with the very same parent.
At times when I think to myself, “this is going okay, it’s going to be okay” something big, like anger or fear of grief, comes out of nowhere like a stinging slap that I don’t understand, don’t have the energy or space to process.
All of this is playing out on the precipice of losing our parents. On top of the caretaking, on another level we are preparing ourselves. We know where it’s eventually headed, know that it will somehow feel like a shock when it happens even while the inevitable moment draws ever nearer.
What helps me the most is being with friends. People who love me, who often know my parents but — and this is key — are not my siblings (not my parents’ kids). They are a step removed, often going through the same thing with their parents. I often don’t need or want to talk at length about it with them. For me it is some weird form of comforting to listen to their stories, reminding myself I am not alone, this is the circle we all make.
For now it is enough to look over to see the nod of deep understanding in response to “my Father wasn’t eating this week,” before I ask “How’s yours?”
So anyway. Deanne’s father is home and doing fine but I don’t yet have her bang-up recipe for Blistered Broccoli Pasta, the one with the umami, the one that’s better than the five-star version from NYT Cooking. As soon as I do, I’ll pass it along.
The Crush Letter
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