They say that by the time you realise your parents were right, you become a parent yourself. And then you have your own set of big mistakes to make ahead of you.
What the pretty phrases you find on Facebook don’t tell you is what happens when you have to become the parent of your parent.
It is a total mindset shift. No longer you can go to your parent for advice and wisdom. You are now the person they come to because they can’t make their own decisions without your opinion. They need you to help them with the paperwork and the bureaucracy. They can’t travel without your help either.
And then there’s the time when they come stay with you. Long gone the days in which they came to help around the house, doing fixer-upper odds and ends, helping re-organise the kitchen and so on.
Now they need you to cook and wait on them. To keep them warm and entertained, and if God forbid they get sick on your watch, to be their 24-hour nurse, just like you do when your toddler has the sniffles.
The worse bit is that you have little authority over them. It’s a completely different power dynamic to your children. And, as they are adults, you might not think they manipulate you, but they do.
I’m writing at 3am… I haven’t slept properly in days… lost track of how many. My Dad has been staying with us – he arrived 2 weeks ago and is leaving in 4 days’ time.
I don’t know if it’s worse to have to look after him around the clock (in addition to looking after my own kids, my wife and my full time job), or the worry I have that he’ll have to look after himself again when he goes back home.
A home where he is still completely self sufficient, despite his 84 years of age. He drives, he shops, he walks daily for exercise, he cooks for himself, he looks after his health.
Since arriving here, and catching a cold in the first week, he has been very difficult to take care of. I’ve had to make specific foods for him (that we don’t eat), sometimes seeing him throwing it away because he doesn’t like it, I’ve had to warm his hot water bottle two or three times a day, give him medicine day and night, go to him when he’s screaming with nightmares in the middle of the night, bring him snacks in between meals, heck, I’ve even had to switch on the TV for him because he sits down and gets comfy before he switches it on.
The situation has made me realise that I’m ill-equipped to take care of an elderly person on a consistent basis. And whilst culturally and traditionally, that is the done thing in Portugal and in my family – having your elderly folks come live you with when they can’t live independently anymore – these last couple of weeks proved that that is not an easy endeavour, and that knowing all too well what my own limitations are, I can put my hands up and say “I can’t do it, it’s too much”.
My own mental and physical health has been badly affected, and whilst I feel a weight of responsibility to care for my Dad, my first priority are my kids. And they too have been feeling the toll.
I can only hope that, on returning to his familiar surroundings, he can get back to his normal routine, get better from his cold and keep on going forward. When the time comes, some though choices will need to be made, but at least I’ll make them with my eyes wide open.