I am loathe to admit I’ve taken life lessons, in any form, from Lindsay Lohan, but bear with me. In 1976 and again in 2003 (thanks to the inimitable Li-Lo), there was a movie called Freaky Friday in which a mother and daughter, through a series of supernatural events, switch bodies and lives. The mother becomes the child and the child the parent, and through this, in true Hollywood fashion, both come to a greater understanding and appreciation of the other. Cue credits and warm, fuzzy feeling.
While I don’t suspect these fluffy, mass-market comedies were trying to delve into the deeper psychological dynamics of love, life, and familial relationships, this role reversal is actually something many children and parents confront, hopefully, later in life (without the body swapping, of course). At some point, as parents age, lose their health, and possibly their mental health, they often become dependent on the children they raised. The caregiver becomes the cared for. This has been the pattern since the beginning of human history, the foundation of many cultures, and even, in some anthropologists’ eyes, the mark of a healthy civilization. It can also be scary as hell.
I am extremely lucky that both my parents are healthy; hopefully they will be for a long time to come. I have friends whose parents are not, and I cannot imagine the strength they must muster to deal with this. However, there’s a reality that I am aware of somewhere in the back of my mind, but I have chosen not to acknowledge the implications of that reality almost all my life.
I am the youngest child in my family, separated from my siblings by twelve and ten years. This means my parents were always the older parents. It’s a running joke in my family that once, when I got really pissed off as a kid, I lashed back at them by informing them just how “really, really old” they were. Yet the truth is, they’re both so youthful and vital, I never admitted what their age might come to mean later in life, namely that my parents will age and need me to care for them, to be the “parent,” earlier than I might be prepared for. It has nothing to do with them being a burden, which I don’t believe someone you love so much could ever be, and everything to do with the fact that I just don’t feel ready to lose the parents that I know.
A year and a half ago, my father had a health scare which he only informed us of after the fact. He had a heart problem that required stints and a few lifestyle changes that needed to be made anyway. By the time we knew about it, the crisis had passed, and he is fine now. Still, the incident elicited terror in me—not just at the thought of losing him, but also because I had never before seen my father physically vulnerable and I could do nothing about it. Until then, I had been living in the blissful ignorance that my parents were immortal. Before, talk of long-term care insurance and “adult communities” went in one ear and out the other. Now that I’ve become co-executor of my father’s will and estate and signed paperwork promising to pull the plug, I can no longer ignore that my parents are getting older and that one day sooner than I would like, I will be the caregiver.
I had a premonition of this earlier this year. My mother, otherwise very healthy, required a hysterectomy because of fibroid tumors. It was a standard procedure—thousands of women, including many of her friends, have been through it—but the recovery can be long and difficult and required a short hospital stay. My sister and I both flew in to be with her for the surgery and the week following.
