She sits hunched over, and half-naked in her wheelchair. She is emaciated from years of cancer treatments, 17 to be exact. Her face exudes sadness and frustration. A triple break in her hip has constrained her mobility. She is struggling to get ready for bed, relying on me for help. She’s my mom, and I am her only son.

I am not ready to care for my struggling parents. It would be one thing to just deal with sickness, but it is entirely another to communicate through multiple pain killers and the Alzheimer’s of my dad. I am not ready. I don’t know if I have what it takes.

A hospice worker recently told me that my mom (the one with her mental faculties still mostly intact) really wants me to take responsibility for all her and my dad’s affairs. All that and work, maintain my own affairs, and still stay sane in the process. I am not ready for this.

Don’t get me wrong — I love my parents and would do anything for them. Most anything. I feel like I will have to give up my life to care for their affairs. I fear that. And it angers me. Am I selfish to the core? I wonder what God is up to in this. Sometimes I feel like I have nothing but Him. Of course, that would be sufficient. But I whine in my victim mentality.

I have my friends, my trusted mentors and counselors who would stand by me in any situation. And I have a good job. I live in a great place, with a great roommate. I guess I am truly blessed. But I no longer have my own family.

Communicating with mom has become an exercise in futility. And my dad is remembering less and less. My family is gone. And I am left to patiently give back to them, with no relationship in return. It is draining.

God is standing with me through this. I am haphazardly navigating the health care system, assisted living, in-home care, hospice workers, etc., etc. But I don’t have feminine companion to stand by me — a woman to see me through and lift me up on a human level as I stumble through this time, the dusk of my parent’s lives. While I am surrounded by much support, I am lonely for the love of a woman. God seems to think I don’t need it right now. It sure doesn’t feel like I don’t need it. Yet I live on.

So I go from week to week, caring for my parents, trying to let go as my mom unloads her stress and my dad reacts (at times angrily) at the slow demise of his mind. Life is slipping away from both of my parents, yet I pray that God is rushing toward them with open arms of redeeming embrace. I yearn that my folks would at least come to know healing in their hearts, if not their frail, failing bodies.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 11th, 2007 at 5:01 pm and is filed under Alex's Life, Challenge/Growth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.