Children Become Parents When Their Parents Grow Old

Today, most parents are getting very old. But this involves a decline in health that requires our care, our protection and our attention.

Therefore, it is said that children become parents when their own are close to death. Because it is our turn to hug them and touch their souls with our words and our concern. We become walking sticks for their souls. We remind them, through our care, of the warmth they have always brought to our lives.

It is normal to look at old age and the last step in life in a negative way. But there are many reasons to see this as a beautiful stage. Something that is necessary to be able to get through the grief.

Sharing that time with our parents or grandparents means that we share the need for care that, in some way, also symbolizes the beginning of a farewell. This means that we support the people who have made us grow and who gave us life with the same power that it takes to say goodbye.

A message from old parents:

When I start to lose my memory or lose the thread in a conversation, give me time to remember. When I can not eat by myself, when I am sick, or when I can not even get up, help me with patience.

Do not despair because I am older and in pain. Not ashamed of me. Help me go out, breathe fresh air and enjoy the sun. Do not lose patience because I walk slowly, if I scream, cry or bring up problems from the past. 

Remember the time I spent teaching you what I need help with now, so you can help me. I have a new assignment in the family so I ask you not to miss the opportunity I have given you. Love me when I get older, because I’m still me, even when my hair is gray.

A final farewell to life

To reflect on the role of children as their parents get older, Fabricio Carpinejar wrote a good piece that can help us during this dark time. It is usually very difficult to feel good because one day you have to say goodbye. Separated from the person who has taught one to talk, grow, eat and walk.

Carpinejar wrote the following:

“There is a flaw in family history, where age accumulates and overlaps and the natural order of things seems to have no logic: this is where the child becomes his parent’s parent.

This is when a parent gets older and starts walking as if he was walking through snow. Slow and awkward. That’s when the parent who held your hand with strength when you were little no longer wants to be alone. This is when the parent, who was once strong and invincible, becomes weaker and has to catch his breath before getting out of bed.

This is when the parent, who once gave you instructions, can now just breathe and look out the window. It is when the parent who was once prepared and worked hard can no longer put on his own clothes and can not remember to take his medication.

And we, as children, can do nothing but be responsible for their lives. The life that created us now depends on us to die in peace.

Children become parents as their parents age. Taking care of our old ones might be a bit like a pregnancy. That is the final lesson. An opportunity to give back the care and love we have received.

And just as we decorate our homes to take care of our children by blocking electrical outlets and setting up pastures, we are now refurnishing for our parents. The first transformation occurs in the bathroom. As a parent to our parent, we will install a railing in the shower.

The railing is symbolic. Bathing, which is usually simple and refreshing, has now become a chore for our protectors’ old feet. The house will have handles on the walls. And our arms will extend like a railing.

To get old is to walk while holding on to objects. To grow old is to go up a flight of stairs without steps. We become strangers in our own home.

We will observe every detail with fear and uncertainty, with hesitation and anxiety. We become frustrated architects, designers and engineers. How could we not expect our parents to get sick and need us? We will regret the sofas, statues and spiral staircase. We will regret all obstacles and also the carpet.

A child is happy if it is the parent of its parents before they die! And unfortunately, it is children who only show up at the funeral and do not say goodbye a little at a time every day.

My friend Joe was with his father until his last minutes. At the hospital, the nurse went to move him from the bed to change his sheets when Joe said ‘let me help you’.

They combined his strength and he took his father in his lap for the last time. He put his father’s face on his chest. His father rested on his shoulders, shrunken by cancer, small, weak, fragile and shaky.

He stayed there and hugged him for a long time, as long as his childhood, his teens, a long time, an infinite time. He rocked his father back and forth. He took care of his father, reassured his father. And he whispered ‘I’m here. I’m here dad ‘. What a father wants to hear at the end of life is that his son should say he is there. ”

Although it can be exhausting to take care of our parents, we can not forget that this sadness and fatigue is part of the grief we have to go through. It’s part of saying goodbye to that part of our soul, to our childhood.

With them, we lose all the things we never shared with anyone else that no one else witnessed.