Faith, Patience & Aging Parents
Keeping sane while caring for aging parents.
Being a caregiver for our parents is hard. There’s no way to explain how all-encompassing and all-consuming caring for our elderly parents is. When you think about it, when we kids become caregivers for our parents — we become the parents. Parenting our parent, when you look at it from afar, is unnatural. It feels like something is off and not right. It feels wrong and foreign. It feels painful almost. The reality is that, even as adults ourselves, we are STILL the child of our parent — we always will be. We do not wish to think of our parent as needing us to take care of them, because we still need them. We still want and need to feel like we can go to our parent for help and support. We still need their advice and support.
As a caregiver for my aging father, I often find myself lost. Just last night, I found myself crying for hours in my room. I tried to sob into my pillow, so as not to wake dad sleeping in the next room. What I needed was my dad. I am struggling through depression and anxiety and have been for many years. I cope with chronic pain and disability every day, as the result of some very unfortunate accidents. I have suffered several traumatic brain injuries — and I will never be the same. What has remained the same, despite my disabilities and mental health issues, is the need to be a child. I still need…
