My parents are in their seventies and truth be told, they are not in their best shape. I have seen those ‘fit’ 70-year-olds and lively 80-year-olds, but it seems our people are cut from a different cloth. The type of cloth that, once crinkled, refuses to straighten back up no matter how much you iron it.
I had the honour of living with or growing up around grandparents who lived to ripe old ages, but were they the fittest people of their age group? Definitely not! My great grandmother died when she was more than 100 years old.
I was about six years old myself. By that time, she had stopped walking and turned blind from old age. My maternal grandmother reached a point where she just gave up. She refused to walk until she was completely unable to. She did not have any health issues, just diabetes. But she had reached a point she believed she was too old to try or bother.
My paternal grandfather, however, returned to the land of the living after he had been mauled by the jaws of death. He returned to living a long and healthy life long after the doctors had proclaimed there was no hope for him and that he would not live very long.
As a child, seeing all this happening around me, I did not give it much thought, even though I saw the impact it had on my parents or the children of the old people, I didn’t really understand it… until now.
My parents are generally healthy and living a relaxed retirement life after working hard most of their lives. But they have given into the indulgence of the old age excuse more than they should. They make excuses about not being as mobile as they ought to be. They would rather sit for extended periods of time than occupy themselves with something physical.
But when the doctors’ visits start doubling and the hospital admissions start piling up, you realise just how hard it is to be the child or caregiver of an aged parent. It’s not only hard financially but physically and emotionally as well.
Seeing your once strong-as-an-ox parent wither away is harder than one might imagine. At this age, we have to balance the role of being a caregiver to an aged parent and the parent of a young child. Constantly in-between the polar opposite sides of life, dealing with all the emotional turmoils that come with it.
