Role reversal

Not really able to do much in the way of blog postings right now, because I am currently in San Antonio, helping my sister care for my mother who, at the age of 81 1/2, is making her final journey, dying of lung cancer. Many, many of us baby boomers are in this position these days. If our parents aren't actually in the process of dying from some form of cancer, they are still undergoing the relentless deteri-oration of aging, requiring special care and attention.

As in other families, our situation is complicated by the fact that we are spread out, geographically, and all of us are financially chal-lenged, so that traveling forth and back is not an easy matter. In-deed, my status as Starving Librarian has been especially frustrating for me during this past year, when my mother (and one of my brothers, who also became ill) needed so much; and I could do so little.

A few years ago I watched my father die a slow death, and it was grueling and heartbreaking. Now I am seeing my mother in the same position. To see your once strong, healthy, energetic parents reduced to frailty and incapacitation, to a state where they don't want to have to move because it will cause pain, and require more energy than they have, is of course distressing. And maintaining the necessary patience, stamina and cheerfulness when helping them is very draining.

We all jokingly say things like, Well, I guess it's payback time, and Everything that goes around comes around; and we know that in fact this is true. But one big difference between our parents dealing with smelly diapers and cranky babies and everything else that went with rearing us, is that they were living in the same house, not 1400 miles away. And the beings to whom they were dedicating so much time and energy, to whom they were giving care, were every day growing, developing, becoming more human; they were waxing, not waning. Our parents were watching, tending, something hopeful, something with the potential for giving joy, if also, at times, heartache and worry. Watching, tending a parent who is dying is, at best, a matter of sadness; at worst, of exhaustion and depression.

I am amazed by my sister, as she has been dealing with this for over two months, and there was a lot of care in the previous year, as Mother had to be shuttled to doctors and hospitals and have endless things done for her even when she was still able to live on her own. The other siblings and I have been taking turns helping, but J is always here, determinedly patient, conjoling or firm as required, performing the same relentless and unpleasant tasks day after day, no matter how she feels. There is almost always one such in every family, the one who is there, and does what must be done.

The rest of us do what we can, and think "I'm never going to get that old," or (those of us out there with the money), "I'm making arrange-ments for long-term care right now."