When Your Parents Get Older

My father is a supremely private person who tends to view social media the same way a Seattleite views a 49ers fan— with total and utter disdain.

“Why would you want to go putting your business out there for the world to see?” he asks in total bewilderment. It’s not that he has anything to hide; it’s that he has nothing to prove, and he would rather live his life with his nose to the grindstone and his good name out of the fray.

Work hard. Mind your business. Provide for your family. Do your best to be fair to people. And don’t go out after midnight because nothing good happens after midnight. That’s largely his mantra, and it makes me and my very public external processing career something of an enigma to him. For the life of him, he can’t seem to understand why anyone needs to be out there stirring the pot in the court of public opinion.

About 10 years ago, my mischievous siblings and I teamed up and secretly captured video of my dad passionately dancing to “Uptown Funk” as he swept crumbs off the dining room floor. The video was gold, and the only appropriate course of action was to share it on social media, where his coworkers could discover it and spread it throughout the workplace. It took a good four or five days for my father’s fury to subside and be replaced with resentful acknowledgment of his own capacity to unwittingly create viral content, but I was forthwith banished, in no uncertain terms, from publishing anything about him whatsoever on the worldwide web.

My dad is a consummate storyteller, so he can’t entirely fault me for my inclination to share; it’s a skill I inherited from him, even if I express it a bit differently than he does. Nevertheless, I’ve largely respected his clearly defined boundary even if I do think his psychological profile would make PERFECT subject material for a reality tv show.

But the older I get, the more I find myself taking meticulous mental inventory of all the quirks and idiosyncrasies that make both of my parents the kind of people the world would benefit from studying. Even if I’m not allowed to share these vignettes with the public, I find that I want to hoard them for myself because they’re special to me and I honestly don’t know how else to process the harsh reality that I won’t always get to live them firsthand.

If you’re a parent, September always seems to bring unbidden awareness of just how fleeting time can be. When my family first moved to Idaho, my son was about the height of my armpit. Now he’s 6’3” with size 14 shoes and the physique of an offensive lineman. It all just goes so quickly, no matter how aggressively we attempt to freeze time via back-to-school photo shoots we stage as part of our unofficial coping strategy. And we’re allowed to express grief at the feelings of loss that accompany our kids’ transition into adulthood. We even have a name for it when they fly the coop: empty nest syndrome.

But I’m realizing that the public conversations about the emotional toll of watching our parents get older are fewer and farther between. There’s no real road map for navigating these transitions. I mean, if the aging is accompanied by some startling medical diagnosis like cancer or heart disease, people can certainly name that struggle. But when it’s just a gradual fade into the final quarter, there’s really no graceful way to start the conversation that what inevitably lies ahead is going to be bittersweet, culminating in loss.

It really hit me pretty hard on vacation last week as I watched my 70-year-old aunt fill out coloring pages with my toddler and blaze a path into his heart. This is the same woman who filled out coloring pages with me as a child. I have fond and vivid memories. But as they sat there coloring, I was struck by the realization that the 2,500 miles between our respective locations all but assure that there won’t be very many more opportunities to make these kind of memories with my sweet aunt, that when my kiddo grows up, she may not be there for him to properly thank. She’ll be that warm fuzzy feeling in his distant memory bank, the one that comes to mind when I show him the several dozen photos I took to preserve the sacred nature of these moments for as long as physically possible.

When my first husband left me, I moved my two older kids back into my parents’ house for quite a few years, so the grandparents are integral parts of their formative years and all the accompanying memories. Now, as I parent a toddler and look forward to the next decade of little league games etc, I find myself saddened to wonder whether or not my parents will be a part of those memories as well. Will they be there for his graduation? Will they see him walk down the aisle at his wedding? It’s not unreasonable to hope that the answer is yet. They’re not even that old yet, and none of this is guaranteed for any of us. But I find that even the hint of a possibility that they won’t be is just so earth shatteringly sad for me that I can’t even let my mind go there for any length of time before distracting myself with other busyness. I’ve always been a person who feels things very, very deeply, so I imagine I’m not alone in this journey.

I’ve always just kind of taken for granted that my parents are physical specimens of health and fitness who will live forever. My dad was a racquetball champion who could rip phone books in half. My mom was an elite gymnast who could back flip off a balance beam. That was just the way it was, and that was the way I expected it to be forever. And my parents are still in pretty dang great shape. My dad can still win push-up contests against 20-year-olds when his shoulder cooperates, so don’t hear me sending them off to pasture prematurely. I’m just increasingly aware of the reality that we won’t be able to keep them forever, and that’s making me a lot more sentimental and nostalgic when I’m in their presence now.

And it’s making me regret the entire decade of my 20s when I blamed them for everything and the entire decade of my 30s that I spent recovering from the ironic and copious servings of self-sabotage I indulged while blaming them. It’s only now in my 40s that I’ve truly begun to extend to them the grace and permission to be humans that I’m quite confident I’ll need my own children to extend to me someday. By 40, (with clear exceptions for people whose parents were truly abusive and who need to maintain safe distance for the purposes of mental and spiritual health), you start to understand that parents are humans, too, and they don’t have it all figured out any more than you do. And they get some things massively wrong, but they get a lot of other things really, really right, and when the crap hits the fan, they’re still the people you’re going to call when you lose your job or total your car when you hit a deer on Thanksgiving or just need someone to tell you it’s going to be alright. And when they tell you this, it’s because they’re personally prepared to move mountains to make it so.

So it’s really unfortunate to waste decades of your life being angry instead of appreciative of people who love you this dearly. Hindsight can be a total brat that way; it shoves your face into truths than can feel like regrets. I’m not saying anyone should get a free pass for unrepentant parenting fails. Family issues need to be worked out. Boundaries need to be defined. Apologies sometimes need to be made. This isn’t an invitation to ignore or whitewash dysfunction. Rather, it’s a call to approach grievances with a reasonable sense of scope and a willingness to prioritize relationship whenever possible.

Life is really short and we only get one shot at it, so if there are young people (or even older people) reading this blog, my encouragement to you is to carpe diem the crap out of your relationship with your parents. If you’re at odds with them, pray about reconciling. Extend an olive branch. Tell them you love them, even if it needs to be from a safe distance. Offer to bring dinner over. Be curious enough to ask for their perspectives on topics that make them tick. Survey them about their biggest successes and regrets in their own lives. Do everything within your power to make their fourth quarters the most fruitful and satisfying chapters of their lives to date. Make them proud of the legacy they leave through your existence on this planet.

This may not be the most profound blog I ever write, but it’s going to be among the most sincere. Time flies, so make it count. Fill the time you spend with your parents with the kinds of memories that make the stories that will outlive them.

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