I’m fifty-eight. This is an age when a lot of my contemporaries are worrying about caring for their elderly parents or other relatives. Many of them, understandably, post about their concerns in various online venues I frequent.
Which makes me feel a bit odd. The last of my ancestors died more than twenty years ago. I have exactly four living blood relatives older than I am, so far as I know — two siblings, and two first cousins once removed. (There may be some other distant cousins, but none of them live in the U.S. and I lost track of all of them long ago. One of the living first cousins once removed lives in England, come to that.) My parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles are all long gone.
My wife’s parents and grandparents are all gone, too, though she still has some aunts and uncles.
While I can see that caring for aging parents must be stressful, it’s a problem I sort of wish I had. But only sort of. I miss my parents very much, but I’m relieved I’ll never need to worry about them.
So every time I see some article talking about how sooner or later we all go from being cared for by them to being caretakers for our parents, I have a rush of mixed emotions as I say, “Not all of us, damn you.”
Two weeks ago I had the hospital pull the tubes out of my Dad, brought him home, and sat in the living room and watched him die.
That sort of thing was bad enough for the family dogs, but I never thought I’d have to do it for my Dad.
I didn’t watch. One advantage of having (at the time) five siblings, and a wife whose job had us living and working a thousand miles away, was that I wasn’t expected to stay and watch. I did pay a final visit, after Dad had come home to die, but I left well before the end. He lingered for weeks.
With my mother, I was there until about two days before she died — I had young kids to take care of and couldn’t stay — but she was in a coma at the end, and had been intermittently delirious before that; apparently the last time she was coherent was when she woke up to say goodbye to me before I left for the airport. Again, four remaining siblings, so we could share the duties, and I wasn’t the one there at the end.
You have my sympathies. It’s horrible.