Messy Lives
When my parents were well and healthy they did things like knit multiple ponchos for my brother's bridesmaids, and did much pruning in our garden and travelled to Machu Picchu and met princes and former ambassadors. I talked proudly to the other mums about what they were doing at playgroup when I collected children. And my friends talked about the interesting things their parents did.
And then my parents got old and ill. And when they decided to move house, I had to travel for two hours (each way) to meet the estate agent and show them round the house. And then my mother went into hospital, and the move happened around my father, and I signed the things that had to be signed, and orgainsed the storage unit. And when I mumbled about this to my friends at the school gate, a different set of friends told me about the daft things their aged parents and parents-in-law were doing, and I realised that my parents were part of a different set of parents. Some people's parents might be climbing mountains, and talked about with pride by their grown-up children. Other people's parents found climbing stairs beyond them, and their grown-up children kept quiet.
And that is today's installment of messy Tuesday.
5 comments:
Well now...I'm sad.
Hi, Penny! Thanks for checking out my blog...that was sweet :)
I know what you mean about parents. So many cultures have little regard for their senior citizens....they consider them a nuisance. How sad. I never had a great relationship with my mother, but you would never know that now when I visit her in the nursing home....I am cheerful, upbeat. I make my mom laugh as much as I can. On Monday, my mother's roomate passed away. My mom has Alzheimers and doesnt really understand. But her roomate's bed was on the window side of the room. I asked the nurse if I could have my mother moved over so she could be by the window and she said yes. So it will be a little more pleasant with sunlight in the morning and I am going to bring in some things to put on the windowsill that will make the room look more cheerful. I go to visit my mother 3 times a week if I can and 2 of my brothers visit once a week. No one will EVER say my mother didnt have children who cared.
Have a wonderful weekend...and thanks again!
Sandy
Hi Sandy, welcome to my blog :-).
Shan, please don't be sad: my parents did all sorts of things in their lives, and growing old is just something that happened to them, like it happens to the rest of them.
The only difficult thing for me is that I look relatively young for my age, and my parents had children late for that era. So when I mentioned my aged parents, people tend to assume that my parents are perhaps 15 years younger then their actual age. An old-acting 60yo is much sadder then an old acting 70yo or 80yo.
Not sad, thought-provoking.
I can so relate to this post after spending a day looking after my mum who has a broken leg (bad break).
It is a very strange feeling to have become the caretaker, and the one trying to be patient, and the one answering all the questions.
What a heartfelt post.
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