We All Become Parents To Our Parents When They Die

At some point the time will come, and it is a law of life that our parents reach or have reached old age. This means that they become weak and need to be protected and cared for by us and need special care.

This is why they say that when they die, we all become parents to our parents. Because then we have to hug them, feed them, give them edifying words and take care of them. We become the support of their soul when we remember that we warm them through our affection, which they did for us all their lives.

Usually we have a negative view of age and the last stage of life. However, there are numerous reasons to think that this is a beautiful and unforgettable time, which also makes it easier for us to deal with grief.

Sharing this time with our parents or grandparents means spending a time full of affection with one another that also marks the beginning of a farewell. We hold onto something that raised us and gave us life with the same strength that they say goodbye with.

“When I get old …” – what our parents teach us in the last phase of life

“ If I can’t remember or lose the thread in our conversation, please give me the time I need to remember. If I can no longer eat alone, become incontinent, or unable to get up, please help me patiently.

Please don’t despair because I’m old and I’m complaining. Don’t be ashamed of me Help me get out on the street, get some fresh air, and see the sunlight. Do not lose patience because I am walking slowly, do not get upset when I scream, cry or throw arguments from the past around your ears.

Remember the time I showed you all of this because now I am the one who needs your help. I now have a new family mission to serve, and for this reason I ask you not to ignore the opportunity that is opening up to us. Love me when I get old because I am still me even when my hair is gray. “

The last farewell in life

To encourage reflection on the role of children in the aging of parents, the Brazilian poet Fabricio Carpinejar wrote a beautiful text that is intended to shed light on this period of life that is marked by many a shadow. It’s even more than that, because in general we find it hard to feel good about ourselves because we can’t just forget the fact that their aging is the last goodbye in their lives that they taught us to speak, the Picking up a spoon, running and growing in every way.

There is a point at which the natural distribution of roles no longer makes sense: this point is reached when the children become the parents of their own parents.

When the mother gets older and starts pacing up and down as if she were surrounded by fog and couldn’t see. Slow, cumbersome, and confused. When one of the two parents who used to take you by the hand and guide you when you were little no longer wants to be alone. When the father, once determined and successful, becomes weak and now has to take two deep breaths before he can move. When this person, who used to say where to go, today only sighs and moans and searches for this door and this window, which now seem very far away to him. When one of the parents, previously work-hungry, fails to put on their own clothes and can no longer remember what medication to take.

And as children we should do nothing more than accept that we are responsible for this life. This life that begot us now depends on us to pass in peace.

Every child is the mother or father of the death of his mother or father. Perhaps the aging of the father and mother is, in a strange way, the last pregnancy and our last lesson. A way to give back the affection and love they have given us over the decades.

And just as we adapt our house to protect our offspring by making electrical outlets child-proof and setting up a playpen, we will now position the furniture differently for our parents. The change often begins in the bathroom. We become the parents of our parents, to whom we now attach a grab bar in the shower.

The handle is symbolic here, because the shower, so normal and refreshing, now resembles a storm for the old feet of our protectors. We cannot leave them alone at any time. There will be handrails on the walls of the house of one who cares for his parents. And our arms become human handrails.

To age means to hold on to objects, to age even to climb the stairs when every single step is a challenge . We become strangers in our own four walls.

We watch every little thing with fear and ignorance, with doubt and concern. We become frustrated architects, designers, and engineers. How could we not have suspected that our parents would get sick or need us? We’ll complain about the couch, the decorative figures and the spiral staircase, about all the hurdles and carpets.

How lucky is a child who becomes his father’s father before he dies! And how sad it is when a child only shows up at the funeral and cannot say goodbye every single day.

My friend, let’s call him Daniel, accompanied his father to the last minutes of his life. In the hospital, the nurse was doing her job, trying to move him from his bed to another to change the sheets, when Daniel yelled from his chair, ” Let me help you!”

He gathered all his strength and took his father on his lap for the first time. He put his father’s face on his chest. He embraced his father in his arms, who was marked by cancer: small, wrinkled, fragile, shaky.

He held him for a while. The time was like his childhood, his youth – for a long time, for an infinite time. He rocked his father from one side to the other. He stroked his father, he reassured his father. In a low voice he said: “I am here, I am here dad!”   What a father wants to hear at the end of his life is that his child tells him that it is there.

Even if it can take our last strength to take care of our parents, we should not forget that this sadness and exhaustion is part of the grief that we have to deal with. It’s part of saying goodbye, saying goodbye. We say goodbye to part of our soul and our childhood.

With them goes all that we have never shared with anyone else and of which they are no longer witnesses. This is undoubtedly something we have to work on with a heavy heart inside ourselves, but life gives us the opportunity to do so. We should use it.