Parents of Boomers

We Boomers are perhaps more fortunate than those of previous generations. For many, at least one of our parents is still with us. Our parents are trudging onward into their 80s and 90s. Wow. We are having to deal with worries about elderly parents that other generations perhaps dealt with at an earlier age--disease, the increasing inability of parents to look after themselves, the questions of what to do with the detritus of their history: books, letters, photographs, cherished mementos. The conflicts with other siblings also loom--disputes about control, inheritance, who Mom loves best, etc.

It's very hard. My parents continue to be two of the smartest, funniest people I know. Yet they are managing less and less to care for themselves. Their daily diet is a horror, medications are forgotten, personal hygiene seems to have gone by the wayside. And yet our carefully reasoned and loving suggestions for dealing with one phalanx of problems after another are dismissed, ignored, and at times resented. It is so hard for them to give up control. Try telling a senior he should not be driving or asking her why her checkbook is not balanced and the rent is late again.... The response to our perfectly wonderful solutions: "Don't micro-manage me!"

It seems to be the hardest to give up driving (especially for men). When one drives, one is in control. As a college student in Mexico City for a summer, it took me two weeks before I got over the feelings of bereavement and awkwardness at not being able to drive, at having to rely on taxis or public transportation to travel. My father should probably not be on the road, and yet he is. He has a driver's license, after all....

It is so hard to --and here my favorite Robert Frost poem pops up--"to go with the drift of things/To yield with a grace to reason/And bow and accept the end of a love or a season?" (entitled Reluctance). Both my parents realize, have been realizing for a long time, that their faculties are diminishing, that they can no longer care for themselves in ways they used to. But they will not take this lying down. They will resist. They will fight. They will "not go gentle into that good night." (Dylan Thomas). They will not let us run their lives. And do you know what? By refusing to let us do so, they are teaching us to tread with patience and respect, to be tolerant and kind, to wait, not to rush things.  Their resistance is exasperating in the extreme, but at the same time, one has to admire this resistance, this refusal to cede, to give up, give in.  I salute them for this stubbornness even as it drives me into a panic of worry about their well-being.  I salute these, my octogenarian heroes, and secretly hope that when my time comes, I will also, in my way, "rage against the dying of the light".  And I love them for being who they are, and for showing me the way.