Parents & aging

I feel flip when I say that being a child of aging parents is difficult, but like pregnancy and parenting, one really has no idea until the ride has begun. My parents were young when they had me, in their early twenties, and so in a fashion we grew up together. This is not at all to mean that they behaved more as friends than adults who were supposed to teach me to be a decent human being. My childhood was an odd combination of old-school Latino parenting, minus the chancla, and empowerment to do what I felt was right and do good for the world. My sense is that I emerged from my formative years relatively unscathed, though some may argue that point. As an adult, I looked to my parents for support and guidance, which they have always given freely. My relationship with them has not been without strain at times, but in the end, family cannot be broken. At least for us. At times I have had to take over as the older daughter, using my social worker skills to make sure my parents are well. When my father became quite ill with what turned out to be diabetes and my mother was out of the country, I argued and stood my ground more than firmly to make sure he went to hospital, and then made sure he did what he needed to do to avoid a return trip. Given that my father and I have extremely similar personalities, you can imagine what a standoff between us looked like. A long time ago I wrote about being given lessons I have not wanted to learn. The test now is about patience. This is not a virtue I possess in great quantities, but since I do not want to commit matricide, I am learning. My mother seems to be in the initial stages of some kind of dementia, where she asks the same question repeatedly and something as elementary as my re-entering a room after more than ten minutes leads her to ask me where I went, even though she looked at me as I told her I would be outside. This is not what I wanted for my mother, not anything a loved child of a loving mother would want to see. My mother has always been strong. She came to the US a week before her 28th birthday, not knowing the language nor anyone besides me and my father. She endured an incredibly painful rough patch with my father when I was in high school, in the end making choices she felt would benefit her family, not just her. Seven months after I finished graduate school she underwent treatment for cancer and has thankfully been healthy for almost twenty five years. I know my mother's fortitude, and to see what is happening to her right now, seemingly without her knowledge, is terrifying, painful, maddening, wrenching, and supremely unfair. I need my mother. The one I have always known. I need for her to be my father's partner, not someone who he may have to care for if, when, this nightmare worsens. I feel selfish and childish saying this, but I want them to be as they were. I don't want this life for them, as I always saw them in my imagination as growing old together and enjoying one another's company. They have been married almost fifty one years and deserve to enjoy quiet and fun. I don't know what is coming, but I can only ask the universe for strength, patience, and love.