Getting old is something that happened to your grandparents not your parents. In my minds eye my parents are young and vibrant. I see my dad on our boat fishing and laughing or splitting wood for our fireplace and cussing because the wedge got stuck behind a knot. My mom is sewing our identical holiday outfits (no we weren’t triplets but she wished we were), or wading in the stream behind the cabin looking so very relaxed and happy. This is how my heart sees them.
The unfiltered picture is different. I see my dad in a body that betrayed him as Dementia took over. He became lost inside his own skin. The same happened to my grandfather, he was old. This wasn’t supposed to happened to my dad. He traveled a hard road that left us all longing for a time gone by and then wishing for time to move by more quickly. It did and my final picture is of him relaxed again, comfortable in his own skin once more as he left us behind to continue his journey. My mom always seemed to move through life with an ease and confidence that made everything look easy. While she was still in Florida we spoke often, FaceTimed frequently and held onto the illusion that it was all fine. You cannot see what lies behind someone’s eyes if you aren’t in the same room. I didn’t see the sadness hiding back there, the sense of oneness that had taken over since my dad died. She hid it well until she didn’t. I didn’t notice the body snatchers until they came, took my mom and left an older version of her behind. Damn the body snatchers.
Aging is not something we want to face. The aging of your parents is something we want to avoid. Watching them age in the flesh is sobering, scary and unfortunately totally unavoidable unless you’re completely disconnected. I am a witness to my moms aging. At times an unwilling witness others a willing participant. It’s a challenge I didn’t expect and one I feel honored to have sometimes. Age has its privilege. She can cheat at dicing ( she says if we know she is doing it it isn’t cheating), ask the same questions repeatedly ( “ I’m almost 89 I’m allowed to repeat myself”), and relinquish responsibility for everything she doesn’t feel like doing. Aging of your parent also carries with it the feeling of loss. I miss the busy vibrant person she was. I miss the knitting sessions, comparing patterns and creating our own. I miss who she was before the body snatchers came. I’m not saying we don’t have fun anymore. There are days we laugh so hard our eyes leak. We are making memories and making our days count. It’s just I didn’t think of it that way before. It just was and we were just in the moment with our unwrinkled faces and bright eyes full of the promise of days ahead.
Time is a thief. It steals the feeling of forever or rather makes us realize that forever isn’t real. Time moves forward and doesn’t allow us to stay young. Our parents become old like our grandparents did, we become our parents and the cycle of life moves forward one grey hair at a time. Getting older, getting old is said to be a privilege not everyone gets to experience. Most days I wholeheartedly agree with that. Some days I want to stop the sand from slipping out of the hourglass and just stay in the moment. I want to pause the forward motion for just a little bit. When mom says she feels old I want to turn it back or stop it but I can’t. Time moves forward. So instead, when she says she is getting old I ask her if she thinks I’m old. She always says no! Your young and feisty. Lol. So then I tell her she is not old because if she is then I am too…..
Life with mom ….
My mother myself 