Your Mom?
Your Dad?
Your Sister?
Your Brother?
Your Priest?
Your Banker?
Your Boss?
My mom told me once that you can consider yourself a lucky person if you can count your TRUE friends on your right hand. I’ll thought about this over the years. Especially during the dark times…
It’s a pretty telling task.
Who can you call on? Who will rescue you? Who will let you rant? Who will let you cry? Who will save you?
and it’s not always the kind of help you thought it would be.
Something fascinating happened to me. I spent the last three years struggling, crying, sighing, frustrated and resigned. Taking care of your elderly parents is your birthright… or should I say your birthresponsibility. I take mine very seriously. Day after day I tried and tried to begin my own life and day after day I struggled to find that happy medium.
They call us now the “Sandwich” generation…smooshed inbetween our aging ailing parents and our adult children. Everyone needs my help. Everyone needs something different every day. So where am I in all of this? Where are my needs? Where is my life? These are the topics I have been struggling with… and losing that struggle.
Fast-forward to August of 2010. Two months short of three years that I rented out my beautiful home and moved in with my parents in my old bedroom to help take care of my mother, I end up in emergency at the hospital. Heart palpitations and pain. After 24 hours of tests my Doctor tells me that my heart is fine. I’m in good shape… but perhaps you have too much stress and anxiety in your life. (insert huge laugh here) She gives me a prescription for Xanex and tells me to see a therapist and deal better with my stress.
Great.
I’m not a pill popper. I take the advice and see a therapist who specializes in caregiving for the elderly. First visit she tells me to get the heck out of my parent’s house! That there are ways to help without living there. Really? Wow.
On December 4th I moved in to my own little two bedroom apartment just one mile down the street from my parents.
All of sudden, I have my power back. I can help and not have to be right there every minute. Great sigh of relief and I’m getting my own life together. I’ve never lived alone. I’ve never even thought “what would I like to do today?”
The other night while visiting my parents and helping, the caregiver said that her husband has passed away and that she ended up caring for her father until he died. She said “I lost my 50s”. These are the thoughts I was thinking for the past few years. I didn’t want to lose my 50s. Life is fleeting.
This is not a dress rehearsal.
