We Need More Caregivers
It’s a world of takers, I tell you.
I read a post on LinkedIn recently. Someone had written that she’d become a mother by caring for her mother. Mothering her mother had made her life crazy yet fulfilling — much like a parent’s.
That made me think of my mother. When I was a child, she’d use every ounce of her will and patience to parent me. And now that I’m an adult, she continues to parent ….. my grandparents.
You see my paternal grandparents live with my parents. My thatha (grandfather) was born just before WWII and my paati (grandmother), right in the middle of it.
Neither had anything to do with the war. I mentioned WWII because I wanted to use it in a sentence and subtly reveal how old my grandpups are so you know how they need someone to care for them.
Thatha turns 90 this year and is quite independent. He loves to read and watch funny YouTube videos and torture all of us by sharing them on the family Whatsapp group. But, he still needs care.
My mum is the Chief Caretaking Officer of my home. And there doesn't seem to be a way to retire from it and chill. Not unless she pays someone to play her role. But she won’t because ‘they won’t do it with their hearts in’, she says. So, she trudges along.
But, my mum is 62 and someone needs to take care of her. And there are many such mums and people all over the world who are old themselves but continue to care for their older parents/parents-in-law/siblings.
Who’s going to take care of them?
Why doesn’t anybody talk about them — their health, their happiness, their fitness, their sleep? Nobody talks about them or to them. But they are real. They are there; sacrificing many hours of their days for the greater good.
I dedicate this post to my mother and the other senior caregivers. You belong to a different league, something which only few would understand.
