UNDPREPARED ◽ ENCOURAGEMENT
Aging Parents
by Marcy Lytle
My parents have both been gone now for nine and four years, respectively, Mom and then Dad. And I will say that watching them as they got older, going through their deaths, and all the emotions connected with this experience were some of the hardest times. I now still have so many friends who are just now going through this, and they too are struggling. One is never prepared for their parents’ decline and final exit from this world.
My mom was healthy, sharp, and still working when she went in the hospital for a simple gall stone and then gall bladder removal. That went wrong, a hole was inadvertently made in her bile duct, and she had to have an emergency re-routings of her stomach. And on the day she started to improve, a mere three weeks later, she died. Another mistake had been made. And of course, our family was devastated.
Anger, unbelief and shock and then the worst sadness and grief that would pop up in the store, the car, in bed at night, became my way of life for a long while. But that story was one of many. Others have parents that decline over time and don’t have the sudden loss. And that’s what we had with Dad…
After Mom died, he began his decline into dementia and odd behavior (I even looked it up, his behavior was ODD.) He wandered around driving and there was disagreement between us siblings on when to take Dad’s keys. He became forgetful and wasn’t eating properly, and you can guess it…he declined over time and didn’t know us.
He wasn’t mean. But watching him lose his memory, not eat, act all kinds of odd ways, made me sick to my stomach and I didn’t even want to see him, at times. It was hard, and all sorts of emotions as his daughter came up, hurtful ones! And after a few years, he too left this world while in the hospital, so skinny and frail, and tired of this life.
Once again grief set in, and then all the work of the house and the inheritance and working with my siblings over the incredible amount of work that’s left when parents are gone. Not to mention the feeling of being orphaned, because I now had no living parents.
That’s my story. But you have a different one. Either your parents haven’t hit the old-age decline yet, or you’re in the thick of it, or you too are done. Or maybe you lost connection or lost your parents early on, through disease or tragedy. No one and nothing prepares you for parental loss of the dementia kind, or the illness kind. Your parents are just there one day…and gone tomorrow.
It’s sadness and sorrow maybe for the first time, so deep, that you’ve experienced so close to home. All sorts of feelings may surface from being sad they’re gone, to unresolved issues you had with them, to even relief that they’re gone if they were ill for a long time. There might be guilt alongside the grief. Memories of your own will flood your mind, especially as holidays come and go….every year…and they’re not present.
First of all, you’re seen. We all go through this. But most importantly, you’re seen by Him. You can experience His nearness and His compassion as you lean into your relationship with God more than you ever thought needed…or possible. Verses you’d only heard before will become your lifeline, if you read them and listen to the Word that’s full of hope…always. You can and will experience healing if there are parent/child hurts and wounds, as Jesus steps in and forgives and sets your heart on Him and begins to hold your hand now, as you let go of theirs. And friends and the cards and love they share will become your lifeline as you those you maybe barely know show up in love and care. Receive it, and give thanks for it.
And lastly, you’ll start to hold others dear, like your spouse and your kids and your friends you’ve yet to meet, because that knowledge you had that life is short has now become your reality. As it will for all of us.
Sadness and sorrow in losing parents is hard, and we will not understand the how and the why of the ways our parents exit this world. And we won’t even be able to grasp heaven and what it is they’re doing “up there” but we will wonder… And that wonder will soon be turned upward as we look toward the sun and the moon and all of creation that our God put into order around us to surround us with his arms of love every single day. And thanksgiving will overtake us in the most amazing ways and begin to heal…
You are loved and seen, and prayed for, today…