No child can watch a parent age
and remain the same person.
Does this journal entry from an anonymous friend read like a page from yours?
My father is a prisoner of war. He has all the earmarks. Gaunt, skeletal look. Thin, fragile skin that peels back to the touch. He doesn’t open his eyes all the way. Or can’t. Yet they bulge from his face like a frog squeezed too tight.
When I rub lotion on his back at night, his shoulder blades protrude like mountains of bone. The temptation is strong to press them back into position, if I weren’t afraid they’d crumble under the pressure.
How long has it been since he’s eaten more than a tablespoon of pureed whatever? It’s not for lack of my trying.
As he wastes away, my muscles grow more defined. Or did. I’m a reluctant weight lifter whose routine involves hoisting fewer pounds each day. Dad’s bulk is no longer a challenge to carry to the commode or back to bed. I can tell how much he’s lost without a scale. And I now roll him onto his side one-handed. There’s no comfort or pride in that.
He whispers his gratitude for every small kindness, as if he’s waited all his life for someone to care about his needs, as if he’s forgotten the years and tears and sleepless nights he invested in caring for me.
His tenderness slays me. It slices me open to lay bare a history of my harshness and irritation with him, holidays I thought were too full to fit in a cross-country trip to visit him, countless invitations to go fishing with him that I turned down to hang with friends whose names I no longer remember.
God, I haven’t dared to ask for much from You. But I’m asking now that somehow You’ll communicate through the mist of an aging mind and fill my father with glimpses of the joy that awaits him and with the assurance that he’s loved. He’s always been loved.
Even when I didn’t know how to show it.
Our parents’ aging—and their inevitable journey toward their story’s end—changes us forever.
During the final years of my mom’s slow crawl toward her last chapter, I felt her agony in my marrow. My breathing mirrored her shallow breaths. My chest ached as if it, too, were operating at 17 percent efficiency.
When she died, a different ache replaced those sympathy pains—the untouchable pain of deep loss.
But those weren’t the only changes in me. My guess is that you would agree. Even in the earliest stages, when the signs are as innocuous as creases around their eyes or when they opt out of a project or activity once enjoyed or when they choose the ramp into the restaurant rather than the stairs—watching our parents show signs of aging shifts our thinking about the length of the dash of life, the space between date of birth and date of death.
I can no longer treat mortality as an offstage reality. I knew it was there somewhere, but it had no speaking parts until my parents’ lives and illnesses invited it center stage.
The belief—rooted in love’s fantasy—that my parents would be part of my life forever crumbled into bits too small to reconstruct. The realization hollowed me but also intensified my determination to make the most of moments, since they would forevermore seem too few.
My understanding about who my parents were at their core changed too. My father died before most normal aging processes could get a grip on him. If he’d lived long enough to lose his ability to play trumpet or teach or preach or feed his insatiable appetite for learning, I’m not sure any of us could have endured the despair that would have colored his days.
My mom’s strong will had been forged. It wasn’t a character flaw. It had been hammered on an anvil of life events that would have flattened most of us.
I saw my siblings in a new light too. Torchbearers. Charged with carrying on the legacy of loving parents with sterling work ethics, an abundance of empathy, an excess of generosity, and a relentless attitude of anticipation for heaven.
At one time, heaven’s strongest pull for my mom was the idea of reuniting with her husband, mother, father, brothers, and sister. Toward the end, she spoke less of that reunion and more of her longing to see Jesus face-to-face. How could I not be changed by that reminder of heaven’s crowning moment?
The transformations from watching a parent age include what we want to avoid when it’s our turn, as well.
I’ve promised my children that I’ll make every effort not to include a rehearsal of body functions in every conversation, to listen when they tell me they think I should see a doctor about that arrhythmia (or misshaped mole or hoarse cough), and to not lose my mouth’s filter. I’ve asked them to hold me to it.
And I ask God to keep me lucid enough to comply.
How are you being changed by your parents’ aging? In what ways are you maturing through this process? Are you resistant to the growth or embracing it?
The apostle Paul talks about “the renewing of our minds,” a change in the way we think. In Romans 12:2 (CEB), he couples that counsel with its divine purpose—“so that you can figure out what God’s will is—what is good and pleasing and mature.” The NIV version says, “Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
Is it possible that one of the by-products God intends to harvest in us during the season of our parents’ aging is renewed thinking about life, death, significance, legacy, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness . . . ?
Only by Your grace, Lord,
Will a rich harvest
Emerge
In this season.
Love—as I come to understand it
in deeper ways than before;
Joy—as I look for its presence among
the tangle of unpleasantries and loss;
Peace—as I embrace it as a prize worth pursuing
on behalf of those I love;
Patience—as those muscles become strong enough
to bear their necessity;
Kindness—as I witness the difference kindness makes;
Faithfulness—as I consistently refuse anything less;
Gentleness—as I pour it out and drink it in;
Self-control—as I use the filter I wish my parents had,
or adopt their noble habit.
Only by Your Grace.
Renew my mind
So the harvest
Pleases You.
Amen.
(Adapted from the fruit of the Spirit
listed in Galatians 5:22–23.)