Facing My Parents’ Mortality. How to go from “my parents are healthy…
By: Vena Moore
Tags: Health, Family, Aging, Gen X, Life

Facing My Parents’ Mortality

How to go from “my parents are healthy and indestructible” to facing their demise

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The first time that I came face to face with either of my parent’s mortality was when my father was hospitalized over three years ago.

I’d been speaking to my nephew one night when he mentioned that my father had suddenly retired from his job a few weeks earlier. At the time, he was 70 years old and still punching a clock as a doorman at a luxury co-op.

He wasn’t the type to sit around and do nothing. He’d often been restless, always looking for something new to see. My nephew then stated that my father left his job because of swelling in his legs and difficulty in walking. My nephew then said that my father had just gotten a cane.

My father had always been so virile. He’d played basketball well into his 40’s. When I was very small, he’d had a bike and rode it on the busy city streets where we lived often. The thought of him walking with a cane was unfathomable to me.

A few days after speaking to my nephew, I went to visit my father, who lived and still lives just a few minutes away from me. I was not prepared for what I saw. He seemed to have aged overnight.

The swelling in his legs made it difficult for him to walk. His gait was slow and unsure and he winced between steps, so walking was also painful for him. Wrinkles sprouted on his face that had previously been unlined. He also wheezed, the air around him holding his lungs in a tight grip.

I couldn’t believe that this same man who taught me about baseball and who had insisted that my sister and I never use the word goodbye as it denoted permanence was my father.

It took minutes to convince him to go to a doctor. He had initially told me that he would see one within a few weeks of my visit, but I felt that he wouldn’t actually follow up if left to his own devices. My father is a proud man and hates asking anyone for help. He equated seeing a physician with weakness.

I went to his place the following day and took him to the doctor myself. Shortly after his doctor examined him, she directed that he go straight to the ER as his heartbeat was abnormally high and he was at risk of death. Frightened, I took him there via an Uber.

He was tended to immediately in the ER where he was given medication to slow down his heartbeat, Heparin, which is a blood thinner and Lasix for the edema (swelling) in his legs. He was admitted hours later and by the following day, he was diagnosed with renal and heart failure and was told that he would need to start dialysis. Kidney disease runs on my father’s side of the family as an uncle was also on dialysis.

The first time he was hospitalized, he was there for over a week. I had gone on a planned vacation in Cancun with a friend a few days after his hospitalization and felt guilty for leaving him in such a state, even though I called him every day. He was released from the hospital two or three days before I was due to go home. Needless to say, it was hard to enjoy that vacation.

Within days, he was admitted to the hospital again when the dialysis center he’d gone to wouldn’t treat him as his pulse was too high. His medication was adjusted and he was released again the day after I returned home from my vacation.

These days, my father goes to dialysis three nights a week. I arranged for private transportation to take him to and from the treatment center as he is no longer able to use public transportation (he never had a car). The other days, he sits at home and watches TV, too exhausted to do much of anything else. A formerly active man who can now barely leave the house is extremely unnerving to me.

Of course, I know intellectually that my parents won’t be around forever. However, emotionally, I’m not quite ready to let go of them. It’s strange to reckon being taken care of for a good part of my life to suddenly being thrust into the role of caregiver.

Remember, Gen-Xers are now middle-aged. We’ve become the new “sandwich generation,” a term defined as a generation of people (usually in their 40s to 70s) who care for their aging parents while supporting their own children. Although, the term doesn’t fully describe me as I don’t have children. Am I just a caregiver, then?

Being thrust into this new role is fraught with anxiety. As my parents have been separated for many years and my mother lives in another state, my nephew and I are his caregivers mainly by default. We call him frequently to check on his health. We also visit frequently to ensure that he is taking all of his medications.

I have had to navigate various programs for him such as Meals on Wheels and a rental assistance program for seniors in our city as he has no clue how to advocate for himself and had never heard of all of the things that he could get assistance with. However, I never know if we are doing all that we can for him.

What happens if or when my father is no longer able to manage living on his own? As we are not white, we don’t have the generational wealth to afford private nursing home care. His only option would be to enter a nursing home that wouldn’t give him the best care and to spend down what few assets he has to be able to get on Medicaid, which would bring him shame.

Racialized trauma of being branded as slackers who love handouts would make it difficult for my father to get the extensive care he’d need because he’d spent most of his life working himself to the bone to prove that he was hardworking and wasn’t shiftless. He’d view Medicaid as proof that he was worthless.

Also, because birthrates were low in our generation, we’re less likely than previous generations to have a large network of social support, so we’re more likely to shoulder the burden alone, which is exhausting and isolating. In my case, many of my family and extended family don’t live in the same city I do. I do have my nephew, but he’s young and is just starting to live his life.

All of my friends are close to my age, but some of them are starting to become caregivers for their aging parents themselves, so they have limited time. However, it is helpful that they are experiencing a similar situation as we all can commiserating without fear of judgment.

As a child, I remember I couldn’t wait to grow up. Facing mine and my parents' mortality wasn’t something I bargained for as an adult.