So as I am driving for 1500 miles alone one does think a lot.  This weekend was such a trip as I got the last of my dad’s possessions. I was listening to great podcasts, books on tape, etc while driving and thinking about elderly parents, their feelings and rights.  So today I am going to talk about some emotional aspects of the process of helping elderly parents.  This topic, will of course, only be my perspective.  I do see a lot of families when I am working in my clinic, the nursing homes and doing home visits who have to deal with their parents.  All families are a little different but there are definitely themes that run throughout.

I see my dad being somewhat lonely as he has never really lived alone his entire life.  Most of us don’t live alone most of our lives but find ourselves alone near the end more than not.  He often calls us from 2-8 times a day or more.  It feels as if he is being very demanding of our time although he is very willing to leave a message and not expect a return call immediately.  I do sometimes hear some exasperation in his voice as he leaves a message when he feels he has something important on his mind.  After his second wife died I saw much more frustration in him as he realized he was now 85 and alone.  He had much greater expectations of us kids and said he felt abandoned when we did not call him as often as he would have liked.  We had not been calling him more or any less after he lost his wife.  But he lived in a faraway state so we were unaware of his feelings or situation.  I did see him somewhat desperate to find a companion again.  That was a clue.  At his age this was becoming a much more difficult task.

I also see him now not wanting to be treated as someone who cannot take care of himself fully.  He gets very upset and angry when we have to tell him no.  I can fully understand this. I can see how this would affect me as a very independent person.  We have had to tell him that he cannot get a pet (he has always had one in his house), tell him he must move closer to one of his kids, that he could not drive for a time, that we had to fix his house to sell and that he would not be able to keep everything he owns in his new apartment.  Losing autonomy is very difficult.  There is a lot of emotion that goes with all this.  I have also seen this happen when some elderly folks can no longer live in their own houses and have to go to a long-term care facility.  There is a lot of sadness when this happens.

We are going to be faced with so many more people coming in the next several years with all of this emotion and difficulty due to our lifestyles being so different from those in the past who took care of elderly parents at home.  This includes younger children of aging adults who are often working, living further away, not having the finances to get help when needed, and the emotional support of extended family nearby.  Poor diets and lack of exercise has increased the rate of the elderly reaching this stage of life unprepared and unhealthy.  So what do we do?  There is no easy answer but the plan is to help people through discussion, healthy changes, and having some supports put in place.

I will be reading on this topic in the next few months and I will post some books, websites and resources in our library and resource center.  Please let me know if you have a story we can post and what has helped you and your family.