It’s both a privilege and an honor. It’s both hard and frustrating. It’s both sad and touching. It is all of these and more when dealing with watching someone you have known for more than your life go through the debilitating decline of their health in their advanced years.
Not everyone has to deal with this, yet many do. The delicate dance of watching a loved one have to come to grips with the fact that there are things they can no longer do, or that you can do with them.
What used to be easy, like going to the bathroom, now becomes a difficult march. Eating becomes something less enjoyable. Just having a conversation can be hard.
Yet we persevere, just continue on – cherishing those days. But we also have to keep going, there is a living to be earned, bills to pay, children and grandchildren to help grow into adulthood so that they might be there one day for ourselves.
Society does not always deal well with those that are aging, those that are declining in health. Many times they are left in nursing homes or hospitals, to decline and die alone. Some times they have no one around to care at all.
And those going through it themselves don’t understand it either. What they know in their minds they should be able to do leads to frustration when their bodies no longer allow them to do it themselves. They feel a loss of dignity when they need help to go to the bathroom, or to bathe, or even get in and out of bed.
They feel less human, like they’ve become a young helpless baby, when they have to be fed instead of feeding themselves.
They feel less like who they are when they don’t even know if they’ve paid the bills or even who some of those who are around them might be as their mind begins to drift away.
Yet there is a dignity about dealing with it up front. It does take a toll, but a toll that can be cherished.
My mother, Susan Eades, is in the red on the right. My father, James Eades, is wearing a white T-shirt and sitting down. This photo was taken Mother’s Day 2014, many family members were there that day.
I am talking about my mother. Her health has become a delicate balance of medication and sustenance. Her age, nearly 80, along with being a heavy smoker for many years, has made it that much more difficult.
My father is 80 and is there with her, and has not had to live through something like this – he did not get the privilege with his parents as they lived 2,400 miles away.
I had the privilege with my in-laws, it took its toll, but got to know them in a way I had not, as did my wife, their daughter.
Now I am going through it with my mother, and it is difficult. There are good days and bad. But it is still a privilege and an honor.