September 4, 2019 – When people who are of a similar vintage to me find out my mom and I live together, they always ask what it’s like. Some are curious. Some are worried. Affordable senior living options aren’t readily available. Or, perhaps, they never have been and I never really noticed. More and more people have their parents living with them. Some by choice. Some out of necessity.
I tell people that living with your parent (or parents) is a blessing and a burden.
It’s a double-edged sword. When your parent is living somewhere else, or as I like to put it, “safely stored away”, you don’t experience the blessing or the burden. You get to experience both when they are with you 24/7.
The blessing is that you get to experience your parent as they are now. I get to see my mom as a person and not just as “mom”. I get to spend time with her and be in her presence. It’s not like she shares pearls of wisdom. Her memory is fading. After having six children, I’m not sure if she remembers ‘who did what’ when we were younger. I shared a random memory with her last week and her response was, “How do you kids remember these things?” Sometimes she will wonder what happened to somebody from our past. I’ll search on the internet and let her know. Sadly, most of the time, the person she is asking about has passed on. Sometimes we have lively discussions. I enjoy hearing her perspective as somebody who has lived through, and seen, so much. Sometimes we’re just together.
The burden is that you watch your parent age – day by day. You watch them as they lose their independence. You listen to their frustration when they can’t find their keys or have to turn the volume up on the TV because they can’t hear.
My mother has shown me the value of time from a senior’s perspective. We take it for granted that it will always be there.
My mom constantly says that my siblings are “too busy”. She won’t contact them or ask them for anything. She doesn’t want to bother them. I tell her that I’m sorry. She just waves her hand away as if to say they aren’t missing anything.
To those of you whose parents are still living and safely stored away. I leave you with some advice. You can call or facebook message to say hello. You can ask if everything is okay and if they need anything. You can choose to believe them when they say that everything is fine and they don’t need anything. The truth is that they will never say it’s not fine and they won’t ever say they need anything. That makes them feel like a burden.
Checking in doesn’t take the place of spending time with your parent (or parents). You’re checking a box. You are kidding yourself if you think that they don’t know that. No matter if we are rich or poor, time is the one commodity that we all have. Use it to make them feel like a blessing.
Diary of a DOW 