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.
I took her to the hospital in the pre-dawn hours for her scheduled surgery, and again, I found myself signing a parent’s living will. As she gave me her belongings and followed the nurse down the hall to the pre-op waiting area, she was the same woman who raised me—my mom. Hours later, after a tense wait and two nerve-wracking meetings with her doctors, in which I was sure they were going to tell me something had gone horribly, freakishly wrong, she came out of surgery still my mother, of course, but … not.
As they wheeled her gurney to her recovery room, my mother looked small and fragile, almost as pale as the clean, white sheets she lay on. Her voice was as tiny as a child’s, and she could not yet form coherent sentences. She weakly gripped my hand and smiled up thankfully at me. Drinking through her sippy straw, buried in pillows and fascinated by all the machinery, still hazy from anesthesia, she did remind me of a child.
