“At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent.”– Barbara Bush
For a great many of us, Life has a surprise in store. Many of us are comfortably in our “middle years” and life circumstances are calming down. Kids are older or moving out, we are settled in our work and finally starting to eye a someday of retirement. Our parents are old but still our parents. Then something happens in those circumstances where we are asked to step up and care for one or both of our parents. We rationalize that it is only a temporary situation and all will go back to “normal” soon enough. But it doesn’t.
Becoming a parent to our parents is a calling not for the squeamish, for it truly is a calling and an opportunity for growth that Life offers nowhere else. For you the reader, I will offer up bits of wisdom developed from caring for my father in his later years. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes just things as they were. I don’t have the answers but I hope my sharing can help others in similar circumstances know that they are not alone. You’ve got to be real AND laugh about it once in a while. That’s why they call it Love.
Peace.
Dad's Back 