This mostly revolves around my father for now. I’m sure I will have the same issues with my mother but for now she is slower but getting around fine.
My father, a man of science if there ever was one, has been an avid reader all his life. Not just a reader but a researcher and studier. His life has been a quest for information, all through books. He would never touch a computer.
Every saturday he would hike. Trails and wooded back roads, 24 miles every saturday. He would always laugh when my mom would say he walks the “mean” out of him every week. I think the solitude and quite kept him sane and happy.
My dad is 83 now and time has taken its toll. I envy those people I see in their 80’s and 90’s that are still spry and get around. Time took its toll on my dads knees and he was in pretty bad pain. He had them replaced and we were hopeful it would be the start of a new life again, but it wasn’t. The pain is gone, and that is good, but his legs and back are left weak and frail and he cant move but a few steps on his own and has fallen several times. He uses a walker around the house but has just started being in a wheel chair when outside the home.
He went in for an eye exam to see about having cataracts removed so he could see better. It turns out he has macular degeneration and is going blind. He can no longer read like he used to, he can no longer research that information he so loved.
All in all, mentally he has aged gracefully and has seemed to take it more in stride then I ever would have imagined.
He seems more OK with it more then I am. I am not ok with it. I’m not ok with it at all, and I don’t know what to do.
I really wish I had some words of wisdom to share, but all I can come up with is “it really sucks.”
My dad was a very active and funny guy. He then got Parkinson’s, fell and broke his hip twice and ended up in a wheel chair and having to have someone else feed him. He really couldn’t communicate the last couple of years but he did still seem to understand humor so that is about all I can give you. He passed away a little over a year ago.
My mother in law is currently in hospice care and suffering from severe dementia. She doesn’t know who any of us are any more, but seems happy when we visit.
So I apologize if I’m being a downer, but just be there for them… joke with them like you used to… enjoy and make the best of the time you still have with them.
My husband is going thru a similar thing - his dad is 85. My FIL was always a very active man. He built at least 3 of their houses, including the first one where he dug the basement by hand! He was an amazingly talented woodworker - the things he built are gorgeous! He loved going to the mountains, swimming, playing tourist, camping, boating, playing golf…
In the last year or so, he’s had both knees replaced. A few years back, he had a 5-bypass. He’s had back surgery. These days, he moves a lot slower, hears a little less. He’s been talking about giving away his woodshop tools because he doesn’t enjoy it any longer. He just quit the church choir. He dozes all the time.
My MIL is 84 and going blind. She loves to read, but she can barely manage that, even with her Nook on high magnification. Her stamina is way down. She can’t manage stairs. She worries about her husband and her 2 younger sons, I think to her detriment.
We think they’re mostly just waiting to die. We live 800 miles away, so we don’t see them very often, and I think on some level, my husband feels guilty that he can’t be there to help them.
The feeling of helplessness can be overwhelming. There’s nothing you can do to stop old age. It’s hard, and it’s inevitable. I try not to dwell on it. I’m not cold or uncaring, just trying to be realistic. Maybe there’s a little Serenity Prayer in my approach.
I once read an interview with Maria Shriver, whose father died of Alzheimer’s disease. She said something that really resonated with me. She said that on visits her children got along much better with her father than she did, because they related to him as he was at the time, while she was always comparing him to the way he used to be. I thought that was very insightful, and tucked it away to remember as my parents grow older.
So take some time to mourn the loss of the father you love and remember, but don’t forget to appreciate who he is today, and enjoy him for the qualities he has now. Since you say he is aging gracefully and taking it in stride, it sounds like the man he is now is someone worth knowing and spending time with.
When I was a kid and my dad was about 40 if he wanted to move the car in the driveway he would just get in, put it in neutral, stick his leg out and by flexing his quad muscle be able to push a two ton car backwards. Now he is mid 60s and he hurts his legs playing Frisbee with his grandkids.
My parents are 60s so they are still mobile and fairly good overall. But I have no idea how I’ll deal. The chronic pain is harder to watch than the disability.
I guess you learn your limitations and learn how to compensate with ergonomics, electronic aides, etc.
Luckily none of my grandparents had dementia. They knew who we were and who they were until the end. That seems so much worse than knee or heart problems.
Yes, In many many respects I am very lucky. I feel bad because I feel like i’m mourning him when hes not dead and that feels guilty to me.
Also, hes taking extra time to make sure I know things… taking down the musket over the fireplace and going over all the history and details. He’s writing down history for later and holding on to it. This weekend he brought out science related pictures to me that are very special to him because he knows I’m one of the only ones that sees the true interest in them in the family. But hes going over them with me… like hes doing these things for one last time.
I think he’s preparing and trying to make sure… I dont know, that he talks about things we have in common with me one last time.
He’s spending time before he dies and I am eternally grateful for that. But I hate that I’m thinking like this. I don’t like to think about it.
When my parents turned 80, they were living in a three bedroom house about 100 miles away from my sister and I.
Mum was in good health, but Dad had begun to get an alarming list of health problems (macular degeneration, Parkinson’s disease, arthritis, difficulty in walking.)
So my sister and I invited our parents to move much closer and buy a bungalow (since it was obvious Dad would soon be unable to climb stairs.)
When they did, we visited them regularly and helped with shopping etc.
Mum became Dad’s carer (which is very stressful when you are caring for a loved one.)
One special weekend, my sister took Mum to a spa for a relaxing time, whilst I stayed with Dad. This really helped mum get a break.
My parents had several happy years in this way, even though Dad’s health deteriorated.
Mum played bridge and Dad listened to music.
We coped with problems like Dad once being unable to get out of the bath (we called the fire brigade, who are trained to lift people safely.)
Then suddenly Mum went down with bowel cancer and passed within a month. Dad died a month after that.
In Mum’s last week, she was in a hospice and she wanted to go through the funeral service with me. She asked me to give her eulogy (which I knew would be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.) I read Mum what I was going to say and confirmed the music she wanted played and she said “I wish I could be there to hear it!”
I included Mum’s remark in the eulogy. There was laughter, which quickly faded away. But I thanked people for that, because Mum wanted her funeral to be a celebration of her life, not a sad time.
Dad’s funeral was also a true memory of his life. In particular his brother spoke movingly about their childhood together.
Absolutely, totally read Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. Our book club read it recently and most people felt it was life-changing. It’s beautifully written, by a doctor who has both cared for elderly patients through their long decline and endured the slow passing of his own father. It deals frankly with the failures of modern medicine and elder-care institutions to provide good quality of life despite their ability to provide more quantity, but also details an encouraging movement toward a different model, where quality of life, ownership of one’s own experience, and self-directed approaches to life and health management are increasingly being emphasized.
As for how to deal emotionally with our parents’ aging and decline… man, I got nothing except empathy. I’m seeing my own parents grow old. I’m aware that my dad is two years away from the age where his father and his father’s father died, and that he’s now enduring chronic pain in his lower back for which doctors have been unable to find a cause. I’m just so terribly sad thinking about my dad’s painful present and my own eventual future without them.
My heart is with you, been through this twice myself in recent years.
My parents were able to stay at home till a few weeks before the end point. Once they hit the nursing home they both willed themselves to move on. It was 5 weeks for my mother and 4 weeks for my dad.
It brought all of us 4 kids closer together in a lot of ways.
I envy the OP. My mom died at age 62, my dad at age 63. So when a neighbor not long ago bemoaned how she’d ever manage without her father, who was 95 and ailing a bit, I did not feel particularly sympathetic.
Fortunately I kept my mouth shut.
One thing I have noted: Many things changed for me after my parents died. Not all of them were bad.
This thread is interesting to me because it is like a dry run for my parents. Like I said, mine are in their 60s and I know I am going to have to face this as they hit their 70s and 80s (all my grandparents lived to be at least 75, so I’m assuming my parents probably have another 10-20 years in them).
I wish I had an answer for you. I have no idea how humanity has dealt with this knowledge that we all get sick and die, that all these happy kids will one day be crippled seniors. I guess we just can’t do anything about it, and bury our misery in religion and cynicism.
I guess just enjoy the time you have left. Knowing your time with him is finite helps make the time better because when you are young you don’t think you will grow old, and you never think your parents will until you see it happen before your eyes and you realize they won’t be here forever.
Don’t upset your father with your turmoil. Support and celebrate each way he finds to adapt. (Like with audio-books.)
You’re grieving and that’s understandable but don’t let it rob you of what you all can still share now. Plus you have the added benefit of talking with him about things you could only wonder about if he passed away suddenly.
This is a time to gather—together, memories, pictures and maybe even learn something new together. It doesn’t sound like he’s wasting the time he has left. Don’t you, either.
And when he dies you may shed fewer tears because you grew together; he, older…you, richer.
Well, maybe one day we will. Scientists are researching anti-aging drugs. Some looking into the “never dying of age-related cause” and others into the “feel 25 until you keel over at 85” and so on. Saw one that’s reversing some symptoms of muscle aging in mice. Don’t expect anything anytime soon, but I’d disagree with notion that humanity will never be able to do anything about it.
You are preaching to the converted. I’m in my 30s, but when I hit my 40s I may start taking nicotinamide riboside and pterostilbene. There are at least a half dozen pathwyas that are involved in aging shown to work in animal models or human in vitro studies (NAD/NADH ratios, AMPK activity, mTOR, however metformin works, telomerase extension, etc), if I can get a few extra years w/o morbidity then I will probably try it.
Tricky part is that treatments that can fight aging can also cause cancer, at least some of them (like HGH or telmoerase extension) can.
We will have functioning treatments for aging this century, maybe full blown immortality by the 22nd century (of course the quasi aging techs of this century will allow some people to live to the 22nd century). But historically there has been nothing we could do. Right now, even if the stuff in the lab turns out to work in humans it’ll probably only add a few years free of mortality and morbidity, it won’t actually end aging. We still have a long ways to go with that.
I am myself in that age of decline and it sucks. When I went downtown, four miles, I almost always walked. Since last fall, I cannot. After a half mile, or at most a mile, I start feelling more and more pain in my right hip. I am partially blind in one eye (cannot read in the that eye, although I could walk down the street). I really used to enjoy gardening, but now I find that even a little bit leaves me exhausted. My hearing is less than it used to be, although I don’t think I yet in the hearing aid zone. I have mild diabetes–well controlled using metformin. No insulin, at least not yet.
In short I feel I am falling apart and it is no fun. I am 78.
I’m watching my folks grow more frail (in their 80’s); And my sibling and I are already making the demoralizing preparations for the day they can no longer stay in their house.
I’m hopefully curious… what things changed afterward? (I’m not meaning to challenge or anything, I’m genuinely curious)
I joined the club of humanity that has lost both parents to old-age a few years ago. That is the way things are supposed to work, I guess. Altho, I went thru the deaths of both parents in my mid 40s, so as mentioned upthread, be glad you still have some time left. While I was denied the experience of being with them as they grew older, no one gets to skip experiencing their passing.
Spend time with them. Bring out the old photo albums and talk about the good-ole times. Sharing memories is good for all of you. Cook some food from your family history. You cannot do anything about the aging process, but you do have control over how you spend time with them.
Good luck with all this - remember there is no “right” way to grieve, or to navigate this part of life. Be gentle on yourself.