One of the few good outcomes from dealing with the heartache of aging parents is that others have them, too. I have found enormous comfort and goodwill and camraderie from colleagues, friends, slight acquaintances - just about anyone.  Not all people have children. Not all people have a significant other. But everyone has parents, or grandparents. Everyone has to do this eventually, to a greater or lesser extent.

Start the conversation. "Are your parents still living?" Hold on to your chair for the rush of information, the offers to help, the coping tips, the stories. A rather dark team building exercise, perhaps, but a very effective one.

8:10:13 PM    

I am too busy to go through all the news, and I'm tired of simply re-posting others' thoughts, so no RSS aggregator for awhile. Just what's new here.

Mom and Dad are failing. I'm taking care of the finances (from a distance), my brother Dana is taking care of the needs that the assisted living facility cannot (largely Scotch and cigarettes for Dad), and my brother Rick helped me clean out the family home so it can be sold. (We have a buyer, God willing...working class houses are tough to sell in Buffalo, New York. Population there is dropping like a rock.) Other two brothers seem to be at a loss what to do.

But this is endgame. Finding the medical devices that can keep them going for a little while - lift chair, walker, wheelchair, bedrails, raised commode... Trying to talk to Mom, more and more in the grip of senility... probably Alzheimers. Wondering why Dad is still alive - his carotids silted up with so much plaque that the doctors are amazed he's still ambulatory, albeit barely.

Reality intrudes. Others are worse off, so self-pity hardly seems appropriate. And I still have my parents, unlike others whose parents have died, often after terrible trials (one friend's Mom had a stroke so severe she couldn't swallow...she lingered in that half-life for a whole year before finally dying).

There is no dignity in aging. No dignity in death. What blasphemy to even blather about it.

7:52:31 PM