Ok, I will write this again. Would you believe I was all done except one sentence and hit the wrong button and erased the whole thing. Maybe I should be writing about taking care of your elderly parent while you are elderly...
Two of the hardest things for the elderly to do is:
#1. Giving up their drivers license. I can so understand this as that is the one birthday I just couldn't wait for it to arrive where I could get my drivers license and to this day remains one of my most cherished possessions.
The elderly don't have to quit driving because they can't drive but because they can no longer multi task fast enough. If they could just drive slowly to the grocery store and home there would be no problem. But no, that is not what happens, people tailgate them, honk their horns, give them dirty looks and pass dangerously because in this rush, rush world no one wants to wait. People pull out in front of them and they can't react fast enough. The idea?? Not that we need to learn patience and remember when they taught us to drive and we weren't so good either but they patiently kept at it and we learned to drive. No people have no patience for anyone that can't do things as fast as they want, that includes checkers in the grocery store, waitresses, everything has to move at 100 miles per hour or people become rude.
#2 Having to wear hearing aids. This one I fail to understand as I would think they would want to hear but not they swear they can hear and that is not what you said. I had a friend that said that is the one thing she is not going to do to her kids, she is getting a hearing aid and she is wearing it. I say, lets wait and see when you get that age as I don't know one person that does not fight this with every excuse they can think of. I have to remind myself over and over and over again as this is one of my downfalls when she can's hear me because she won't wear her hearing aid that at one time in my life she could not understand me and she remained patient and learned to understand what I needed. Again this is a to fast world and we don't' have the time to explain over and over and over, but wait, didn't they do that with us when we were kids?
Part of the problem with taking care of elderly parents is the role shift from parent to child again and they are still the parent. They don't want to follow rules but then neither did I when I was small and we need to remind ourselves of that.
We need to be patient with the fact that their hands become arthritic and they drop things a lot, kind of like when they had to pick our toy up off the floor 50 times as we could not hang onto it. The other day I was exhausted and so tired my eyes burned and I came home and she dropped a whole great big bowl of stew all over the floor. I know I rolled by eyes and thought why didn't you tell me you wanted a bowl that heavy out of the frig? Then I remembered the night she came home from work exhausted beyond exhausted and still had to fix supper only to walk through the door and find out that I had decided to bake a cake. I had chocolate cake all over the cupboard, the wall and the floor as I had lifted the mixer up before it had been shut off. I had dirty dishes everywhere. Instead of killing me she managed to say "thanks for the cake". I can still see the look on her face and it was not a thanks for the cake look, it was a verge of tears look.
I remember once back in the day that everything had to be ironed and me and my friends had taken all the clothes out of the dresser and closet to hide in for hide and seek. That time she was not patient she wanted to kill and I must admire her that she did not hit any of us but we learned a hard lesson and had to wash and iron everything in my room, took us 3 days before they could go home. We never played in the clothes again but I am sure she had to re-iron everything we had ironed and remember this woman farmed and worked full time.
When you come home and she has decided to paint the bathroom and then ran out of energy and had to quit and you have to finish when you had other plans remember back to the day that you and your friend decided to wax the floor with the good ole Areo wax that if you put on heavy turns yellow. Well we had watched TV and the floors looked like they had 1/2 " of wax on them so we decided to surprise mom and wax outs. Well mom worked at a grocery store and we were poor so she bought things on sale so their was two gallons of aero wax in the closet and we put all of it on our white floor and then went and rode our horses and came home just in time to get our socks on like she let us and slide around the floor polishing it. We opened up the door and our mouths flew open and tears in our eyes at the yellow smeared mess that once was a white floor. When she got home that time we were on our hands and knees with scrub brushes and suds up to our wrists crying and washing. Once again instead of killing us because she felt so sorry for us she ran us outside and she cleaned up that awful mess.
When I was in the hospital with my twins I had to stay a week. Right next to our area was the nursing home and on Sunday this little old lady came out with her chair and sit down in the hall. She had her pretty dress on inside out, she had makeup on but it was not a good job. She had fixed her hair pretty, or tried to and she just sit there looking so sad and every time someone would walk down the hall she would smile and then the sad look was back and her head would drop and she would sit some more. I asked the nurse about her as she looked so sad. She said the lady gets dressed up every Sunday and waits for her family to come and they never do. She said they come either for her birthday or Christmas and it is a duty time and you can tell they just want gone and only stay about 10 minutes. I asked how far away they lived and she said all 6 of them live in the county and some actually live right in town but they are to busy to come. I swore on that day that my parents would never be neglected like that ever. Sometimes circumstances make it where you have to put them in a nursing home but that doesn't mean you have to forget them. They are your parents and they never left you and believe me raising you they had many hard times but they always took time for you. Take time for them. How long does it take to make a phone call every night just to say "just wanted to say goodnight mom and to tell you I love you". Good morning mom just calling to say have a great day. How long does it take to spend an hour a week with her? How about stopping on your way home just to say hi and spend 5 or 10 minutes with them? How long? You have been their whole world since the day your were born and they have never forgot that you are a part of them.
Appreciate every day you have with your parents. I lost my dad.24 years ago and the biggest regret I have is that I did not quit my job and spend more time with him and now he is gone and I can't. Nothing is more important then the ones we love especially our parents who gave us life, who raised us in a time money was hard to find and yet they did not put us away somewhere, they did not give up on us, they loved us through it all.
I dread the day that my mom does not challenge my temper, my time and my patience because that will be one of the saddest days of my life but this time I was smart enough to spend as much time with my mom as possible. I will not look back with regret again and say I wish I had spent more time with them.
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