I completely understand how you feel, my Mom and Stepdad are closer now finally and I know that time is not in their favor. Things are at least a little better now since I got them out of a nursing home and found a home care giver for them. I friend of mine had told me about being able to find senior / elder care that would come to your house, but I had no idea how easy it was to find. I went to the site she mentioned http://findinghomecare.com and was very pleased with the results. I know feel less guilty and better about the quality of thier lives, now that I have a trained specialized care giver. They have helped me add a registered nurse now as well, as their needs progress. Anyway, I just feel better/happier knowing I am doing the right thing and that they are close to my home and of course close to my heart. If anyone is needing help, I would sure check them out, they seem nice, professional and eager to help me in finding homecare.
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Bringing Home Mom and Dad
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Just as we'd picked a pediatrician, there were doctors to be found and services to be located. Instead of shopping for furniture for a nursery, I had to find my parents an apartment. My babies, now 23 and 21 years old, hadn't given any prior input into their living arrangements, and my parents also put the decision into my hands. "Find us a place. You'll do fine." Where would they shop? Where would my mother make her weekly hair appointment? Where would they find the friends and social support they would?
I didn't want to have any illusions. All the old mixed feelings about my parents came back. I reminded myself that we're different people now. They're no longer the powerful forces I once perceived as holding me back from the life I desperately wanted to start. They're people who now depend, to a large extent, on me. I'm running the show—except, of course, I'm not. They're my parents and that doesn't change.
But what is possibly the most difficult outcome looms. Just as children move away, my parents are going to die. When my children were young, lots of vague passages of Khalil Gibran floated around my head; we were all free agents, the children would leave and I would be a model of non-attachment, continuing with my life, joyfully releasing them to their own journeys. Nothing prepared me for the pain that went along with this happy release.
Perhaps if my parents still lived 1,300 miles away, I'd feel the pain of separation less when they eventually leave. But they are now part and parcel of my everyday life and the huge gap they will leave will be more overwhelming than it would be otherwise.
But I survived my children's entries into my everyday world and their exit into their own lives, now mysterious and private. I came through my parents' entry and will get through their eventual leaving. I'll be shown again the foolishness of my conceits, the infinitely greater sweetness and richness of life, the poignant beginning and ending of yet another cycle.
Rickover lives in Lincoln, Neb.
© 2008
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