Ah...parents!

Tonight I spoke with my dear friend Roni who is with her parents in Akron. Her Dad at 87 is in intensive care battling pneumonia, Legionnaires. Her Mom is presenting with symptoms of early stages of Alzheimers. Back home in Bowling Green, sits her husband and son minding her mother-in-law, 95, who has come to live with them for 3 months after suffering a fall in her home in Florida and several weeks of hospitalization. Her husband and his brother are splitting the care of their Mom right now...three months with one and then three months with the other.

So think about this. Roni at 65 and Chuck at 64 have 3 out of 4 parents still alive! And while living their own lives, Chuck still working et al, and being on call for their 3 children and 5 grandchildren they are now caring for 3 aging parents.

It boggles the mind, doesn't it? But that's the reality of the so called baby boomers today. We are caring for our kids' kids and their great-grandparents. Talk about the rubber band generation!!

So how do you deal with the emotions that roil inside of you when you are faced with this incredible task? Who do you cut off first? That sounds cruel but let's face it....something has to give. Do you focus on your parents who raised you, supported you, helped you with your own kids? Or do you look to the future and decide that you have to focus on your grandkids and be there for your own kids?

I don't have any good answers. Both of my parents are gone. My Dad to cancer just months after placing my Mom in a nursing home with Alzheimers. Mom spent 9 years on that ward. I watched her slip away from me and all my siblings. I'm not sure where she went for the years it took her body to finally acquiesce to letting this life go. But I stood vigil while it happened.

What's easier on a child, adult though they may be? To have a parent be "with you" until old age finally eases them into the next life, or to have them leave before their time in your eyes?

All I know is that I am witnessing my friend be swamped with decision-making and feeling overwhelmed by 3 aging parents depending on her.

Is it possible that one can live too long? I think so. What happens to families that have postponed dealing with those God-awful decisions that have to be made about final instructions, plans of what to do if Mom/Dad lives so long they can't take care of themselves? It can rip families apart. We've all seen it.

So tonight I speak with my Mom and Dad, wherever their spirits are, and I tell them how I love them. How I hope that if they had lived longer I would have cared for them in the right manner. That my brothers, sister, and I would have made the right decisions. And I admit to them my relief, that they are at peace and I never had to deal with what my wonderful friend Roni is facing.

Ah, parents. Mine, yours, ours. We came from parents, we are parents, and our children become parents. Do we parent ourselves as well as our kids? Do they parent us? Or is it that it's one continous cycle, where we are children, adults, parents, and children again? All I know is that whatever stage we are, we need to love and be loved.