Once More With Feeling: The Emotions That Come With Caring for Elderly Parents
Back in my carefree youth, which wasn’t even that carefree, I didn’t think too much about how I would feel when my mom and dad got old. In fact, “old” was kind of a bummer word that we didn’t say in our house except as an insult or a joke. If my mom talked about getting grey hair or becoming forgetful, we would just tell her to stop being so depressing. Why not look on the bright side, where nobody ages past 55?
Well, too bad, carefree and not-very-empathetic me! Old age is kind of like puberty in that it shows up whether or not we’re ready for it. Also, people in general are living longer than ever, so the part of life that we used to think of as the “sunset years” can last for quite a while. If you get a sinking or overwhelmed feeling just reading about this topic, you are not alone. Our parents’ aging (and our own) may be inevitable, but it’s also emotionally difficult to face.
Part of the problem is the prejudice that our very youth-oriented culture has against elderly people, and what that means for us. Think of those funny Progressive Insurance commercials where “Dr. Rick” helps new homeowners avoid doing things associated with baby boomers, such as talking loudly to strangers at restaurants or leaving a voicemail with their phone number. Sure, humor can be a helpful way to deal with difficult things, but the fact is that aging is often treated as a flaw or a social failure rather than an expected stage of life.
Aging is hard enough on its own, but this social prejudice can make it acutely painful both for aging people and their families. For women, who tend to be judged socially on personal appearance, aging can bring feelings of low self-esteem and worries about social exclusion. The changes in the body can feel like a slow-moving disease—a situation to be feared, denied, and, for as long as possible, covered up. For men, who tend to be judged by strength and competency, the early stages of aging may actually bring some extra social clout. As years pass, though, there is often a struggle to cope with a feeling of being sidelined. No longer valued for what he can do, a man can get depressed, wondering what all his work has amounted to. An adult child may struggle to watch parents deal with these physical and social costs of aging. He may feel pangs of loss watching the “strong” mother or father who raised him shrink into someone weak and frail. At the same time, he’s forced to face what’s ahead in his own life.
It’s worth stopping to notice how the Bible talks about old age. Scripture acknowledges physical aging, but protects the dignity and purpose of older people by honoring their bodily changes as signs of virtue rather than irrelevance. Grey hair is a crown of glory. It is gained in a righteous life (Proverbs 16:31, ESV). Could there be a greater contrast with modern society, which tends to value people according to sexual attractiveness and productivity? As a possessor of some wrinkles, I personally find a lot of emotional comfort in this! Leviticus 19:32 gives explicit social instructions for younger people regarding how to treat elders. You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God: I am the LORD” (ESV). In one of my favorite passages from Luke 2, it’s the elderly Simeon and 84 year-old prophetess Anna who recognize 8 day-old Jesus as the Messiah the people of God have prayed for many years. I have to think that these two old people had some of the stereotypical characteristics of elderly people. They probably asked their grandchildren to speak up, and I doubt they could have handled voicemail. Yet talk about aging with purpose!
As our parents get older, most of us do want to “stand up before the gray head” and “honor the face of the old man,” but the emotional challenge is in the details. Think about how hard it is to control your emotions when you’re tired, physically uncomfortable, or overwhelmed. Older people feel that way a lot of the time, which makes conflicts hard to avoid. Practical issues like communicating with doctors or navigating the internet become increasingly difficult. Since aging parents don’t always realize they’re not coping well with physical and mental changes, it’s up to adult kids to communicate these things without causing major distress and shame. At some point there have to be negotiations about how long they can continue to make their own meals, live in their own homes, handle finances, and drive on the interstate (or at all). For elderly people, surrendering control is acutely hard because of what it signifies about the next stage of life. Protesting all the changes, they may suddenly, inexplicably act like stubborn teenagers.
The experience of being pushed away by a parent when you’re just trying to help can be pretty shocking, especially if you’ve always been the “good kid,” the one your parents praised and counted on. You don’t want to make them unhappy. Maybe you waited too long to talk to them about driving, and now you really have to put your foot down. Doing this at a crisis point—which is when most of us do it--can cause stress, irritation, grief, and most of all guilt.
If your relationship with your parents has been generally good, you may find a new normal once the hardest questions are settled. But if there is unhealed childhood hurt or if there have been wounds or cutoffs in recent days, it’s difficult to love and honor your parents through their emotional challenges. A father who was distant or even abusive caused such deep hurt that it now feels unfair to be in charge of his care. A mom who was previously kind but then became angry and harsh due to dementia feels impossible to love.
If you’re in this situation, know that you’re going through something genuinely difficult, and that it isn’t your fault. By the grace of God, you may still be able to care for parents, but if good feelings have never been there or if they disappear, you will probably deal with resentment and (once again) guilt. You may wonder what’s wrong with you that you don’t feel more affectionate or more grateful, but the fact is that your emotions toward family are connected to deep memories and deep desires. Feelings can’t be turned on or off at will. Nor do they respond well to outside pressure, for instance, from other people telling you to be more grateful.
Whatever kind of relationship you have with your parents as they age, you will likely “feel some stuff,” by which I mean some hard stuff. So what can help you deal with those feelings? First and foremost, support from a good community. Good doctors can make hard conversations with aging parents much easier, especially about thorny issues like giving up keys to the car or moving to assisted living (older people will often listen to an authority figure like a doctor when they won’t listen to their grown kids). Siblings and friends in the same stage of life can share the emotional burden and even lighten it. It does help to laugh! Lots of people your age are going through the same things. If you’re in a good church, it can be really helpful to ask people in a small group or Bible study to pray for you as you struggle with the hard parts of honoring your parents, especially if the relationships are broken.
An important thing to keep in mind is that some of the emotional struggles above may come from you trying to bear responsibilities that aren’t yours to bear. You can’t fix the fact that people get old. You can’t cure your parents of aging, keep them happy all the time, make their grandchildren visit them often enough, convince the rest of the world to feel as deeply about their situation as you do, or always feel happy about the situation yourself. They’re going through the hardest stage of life, and it’s not in your power to change that.
What you may have some control over is the way you spend time with your parents. What older people usually crave, and what is often hard for young people to give, is time without interruption. Many of us are doers. We try to keep moving and stay productive. If you’re like me, it may be hard for you to sit even for an hour and accomplish nothing, check off no boxes, schedule no future plans. But slowing down can be good for all of us. It offers us a chance to settle our bodies and minds and reflect on the things that matter.
When my mom was living with dementia, there was very little she and I could talk about. We just sat and looked out the window at birds, or studied the same old pictures in a box. I got tired of this, but for her, the birds and the faces were brand new every time. I realize now that it helped her just to be near me, and I’m glad I could give her that uninterrupted time. It was good for me too.
From an eternal perspective, watching our parents grow old should remind us to hold the world loosely, even while we’re young. So much of the grief we experience as people age is a reasonable grief at the “wrongness” of things. It’s wrong that the world values us for what we do and how we look rather than who we are. It’s sad that we’re all encouraged to build “little kingdoms” that we can’t take into eternity. Caring for our parents as their bodies age can help us focus on the things that last—faith, hope, and most of all love. These will still be with us on the day when God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away (Revelation 21:4, ESV).
