More people than we know
who care for aging parents
have a head start on grieving
long before the end.
Carolyn said, “My sister and I watched my mom grow so dependent upon us. Always proud to do things on her own, she was heartbroken, and so were we.
“Mom had struggled all her life for something better for her children. We were a product of divorce. Mom fought a hard battle with her health until one day she said, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ I knew then that I was going to lose my best friend. But I’d started missing her long before that moment.”
“My dad died two years ago,” Lorna said. “His mind was sharp until the end. One of the last times I picked him up from the hospital, he said, ‘Where are the hubcaps on your car?’
“I told him, ‘They came off, one by one. I haven’t had time to get new ones.’
“He said, ‘It’s bad for my image to ride around in a car without hubcaps. We’re going to go get you some right now.’
“So instead to taking him home from the hospital, I drove him to the auto-parts store, where he insisted on going in with me to pick them out and buy them. He might have been dying, but he still wanted to take care of his little girl.
“That,” Lorna said, “was the kind of dad he was and the reason why my grief process started early.”
Karen tells of an important healing layer in her grieving process. “Last Christmas, my husband received a gift of a machine that converts VHS tapes to DVDs. He pulled out some old VHS tapes and began the process.
“One of those tapes was his parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. We watched it and then the camera showed the door—and in walked my mother. We figured out she was sixty-five at the time. She was so beautiful and happy. She went around the room charming everyone she met.
“It was an amazing moment for me because I’d been filled with such guilt and pain over her final months on earth, and all I’d been able to think about was how she was in the end—ornery and scarred, scared and out of her mind.
“I had forgotten,” Karen said, “what an absolutely wonderful, charming, and beautiful person she was and what a great mother she had been to me before she began to fail.
“I am so grateful to God for those moments recorded on tape. They helped put my grief in a new light. Oh, that God would grant me a sharp memory of the years before, when she was healthy and happy and fun.”
If we have prior warning about a parent’s imminent death it’s natural that we begin the grieving process early. And it’s not unhealthy if that knowledge presses us into God’s embrace and helps us fully embrace the dying parent.
How do we manage our emotions when we know the end is drawing near?
Some find ways to commemorate the life and legacy of their beloved parent by choosing an item that represents who the parent was before the negative effects of aging faded the picture.
I have recipe cards in my mom’s penmanship—stained with fingerprints and butter. Those cards are a treasure.
I have examples of my father’s penmanship too. Distinctive, almost architectural. And his handwritten sermon notes from the 1950s. I also have a cherished recording of his final band concert, which was just two months before his sudden death.
When we siblings divided the contents of Mom’s apartment before her death (she insisted—she wanted that all taken care of before she breathed her last), we each chose one item that meant something to us. One brother took our father’s triangle-folded flag from his service in the Marines. Another sibling took some of the many books Mom had collected. We each found something that resonated with us. I took a small ceramic pitcher that Mom had used years ago in pouring water over our little-girl heads to rinse out ammonia-heavy perm solutions.
A good friend of mine makes memorial jewelry from fingerprints—pendants, rings, and pins. She mails a kit to a family member. Inside the kit is a mold and polymer for making an impression of a loved one’s fingerprint—even down to a tiny baby’s. Then my artist friend creates gallery-quality jewelry pieces with the impression embedded in sterling silver, surrounded by semiprecious or precious stones. I wish I’d known about her artwork while my parents were still alive.
Amanda’s memory is imprinted on her heart rather than in sterling silver. “I remember my grandfather deteriorating over a six-month period from cancer. My mother and I took care of him as he got worse. One of the last events he was able to attend was at a supper club. I remember walking up to him and giving him a hug. He melted into me. As much as I knew he loved me, he didn’t ever show affection. That moment is a memory I will have forever.”
When grief has gotten a toehold in us, it’s more than time to start collecting the memories and tender moments that will cushion grief’s blows. Those whose parents deal with dementia or Alzheimer’s often report that their grieving process starts at the beginning of the disease and spreads out over the entire journey. Their grief seems almost spent by the time the end comes.
And then they discover a new version of grieving.
As each aging parent is an individual, so are our individual methods, lengths, and styles of grieving. But no matter how individual in nature, one anchor point secures us—our hope in Christ.
You are my hope, Lord. You, Lord,
are the one I’ve trusted since childhood.
I’ve depended on you from birth—
You cut the cord when I came
from my mother’s womb.
My praise is always about you.
—PSALM 71:5–6 CEB
From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee,
when my heart is overwhelmed:
lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
—PSALM 61:2 KJV