Have You Become Your Children’ Parent? Join the Crowd!

The majority of our lives we’ve looked to our parents to get advice and answers to questions. Now we’re the ones needing to think of the solutions.

It happened slowly. I believe that it began around the time my parents reach their 70’s — that the telephone began ringing — every day. Don’t make me wrong. I love talking about my parents. I believe I loved it a great deal better when it was just easy conversations rather than them wanting me to inform them what they should do. But severe illnesses hit them equally and being a single child it was me they turned into. I truly would not have it any other way. I only wished I was a good deal wiser.

It really shifts your brain in the household role you’ve played of your life. Instead of these accepting me to the doctor, waiting for the hallway to get my appendix to come outside, or awaiting the doctor to put a cast on my leg, or awaiting me to possess that following grandchild, it is me carrying them. It’s me supporting them to choose what to do. Life really does come around full circle. There is no doubt about it if you’ve got older parents.

It’s a good deal of responsibility to inform your parents. I do not take it. Despite a diploma in social gerontology, I have to do my homework often to find out what path to choose. It’s hard just realizing that they’re in their 80’s. It used to look so outdated. It used to look like I was a long, long way from being “older.” It now seems like it is only around the corner.

My identity, my thoughts on who I really am are wrapped up my parents. Who will I be when they are gone? It disturbs me when my youngest child was coming of age. It was a jolt to realize I would not be Travy’s go into individual. That was a part to relinquish. He was coming to his own. I wonder if my parents are waiting for me to “come into my own?” I hope they are not holding their resumes! But that will I be if they are gone? I am sure I will feel just as lost, maybe far more lost than when my youngest left home.

The older your kids get, the more you know that you really must have been a doctor!

I devote a good deal of time looking online for my parents. It normally has something related to a health issue, but that’s not where it ends. It seems that telephone books are something of the past. When they require a dental practitioner or the tractor fixed, I am the yellow pages. When they have to know what things to take for nausea, I am the researcher. I truly owe them much more than anything I have ever done but it will make me pause to think. Can my kids have to do that stuff for me?

I have learned to roll with these punches.

Initially I kind of went kicking and screaming into this new lifestyle function. It really was not worth the fuss. It’s what it is. The most surprising thing is your gratitude. They are constantly telling me “thank you.” They don’t have to. They paid their dues over and over again for something that I might do on them. I’m going to hang on to this function or some other function that calls my parents for as long as I can.

source http://www.californiacoastparent.com/have-you-become-your-children-parent-join-the-crowd/