Care Providing for Your Aging Parents

People age and it is a fact of life that people needs someone to take care of them when they reach that final stage in life where they can not even fend for themselves anymore.

Culture plays a big role in caring for elderly, some cultures are big on taking their elderly to their home and some does not want to be burden by or be a burden to their families.  Some just think that when they are already on their own, they should stay away from their parents since their parents ‘ responsibility is already done and starting their own family should be their first priority.

It has become a cycle of life now a days that once you are already out of your parents’ house you are on your own and coming back to take care of them is not your responsibility.  The notion that your parents should have prepared for this stage in life and have professional caregivers who they can pay and be their care providers will do all the errands for them.

To understand how care providers live, we have to know the role of a care provider and let us see how it can be fulfilling or be very stressful.  There are different kinds of care provider and how they experience emotional attachments are also different.  Some are just doing it for the money, some are doing it as a passion, some because it is a form of paying back but most they do it because they simply love their parents, but whatever the reason may be, there will be an emotional attachment involved.  Imagine seeing the elderly you are caring for struggling due to sickness or old age, no matter how impersonal you may get, there will be a part of you that will tell how hard it will be to be hopeless and feel being useless.  What if you are on their shoe?  You are not going to be young forever, someday you will be old, weak, sickly, fragile and hopeless.  Will your are provider care for you the way you want them to or pay them to?

Think of this, being a care provider to your own aging parents is different, it is a task, it is a life time commitment to the person who brought you to this world.  The two people who gave you the education you needed, to be able to be equipped in facing the challenging world.  The two people who loved you, who nourished you, who took care of you when you are sick, who supported you and accepted you for not just who you are but also what you are and what you have become.

The same people who you thought was the superheroes when you were a kid, the two people who you thought were stupid because for all you knew being a teenager is supposed to be free to do anything you want, and the same people who you knew all along were right because all they want was to give you the best life and proper decision to take.

   It is hard yet fulfilling…

Hard because you see the people you love deteriorating and slowly losing all the life in them.  You see them starting to get weaker and weaker everyday.  You see them get wrinkly and greyed or in some cases getting bald.  Maybe you will start to wonder why the same person you saw when you were growing are now the same person who can not even lift the bag once you carried when you were starting to go to school.  The person who is now starting to forget your name and sometimes even forget you exist.  The person who loves you so much when you were a kid is the same person who yells at you because they can not even recognize you.  That is how hard it is to be a caregiver to your parents.

Fulfilling because you are there to be with them when they are starting to get weak, and it is your payback time to care for them on how they cared for you.  Will it be nice to make them experience the things they can not give you when you were a kid?  That they raised a good person who is capable of giving not just care but love, providing things and experiences that they have never experienced themselves because they prefer to save the money just to send you to school and get the best education.

According to the bible (Deuteronomy 5:16) you should honor and obey your parents because The Lord God will bless you with all the goodness here on earth and you will have a long life.

Also being a good example to your children will definitely make them see and realize that role reversal is not a bad thing after all.  They will also know that taking care of elderly can be a challenge but very fulfilling.  This will also make them understand that there is a process and easy way of taking care of not just their own family but also their aging parents.

All the best!