Letting Go of Our Parents

There is a parallel between a parent letting go of their maturing child, and an adult child letting go of their aging parent.

Letting Go of Our Children

In the first case, we are constantly adjusting ourselves to the growing abilities of our child.

Our job is to expect them and allow them to do more and more while we do less and less.

With their every step forward towards adulthood, we parents find ourselves diminishing in importance and becoming less necessary.

It’s tempting to hold onto their prior era, to prematurely freeze things and hold onto the comfortable mode we are in.

It feels good to be important and to be needed.

The Temptation to Hold On

So it’s tempting to hold on and cling tighter than we should and remain in denial and to even fail to let go.

But our child has changed whether we like it or not, and so most of us eventually adjust and catch up to where they are.

Only to find they have grown up even more.

Only to find that we must once more let go a little more.

Only to find we must die to needing to be needed, this needing to be relied upon, this needing to be so important.

It’s why parenting is a long series of painful but unavoidable steps towards letting our children go.

In this culture that celebrates and pretends there is such a thing as eternal youth, having adult children means we parents aren’t young anymore.

They have grown up, and that means we are now going to grow old.

Our New Dependents

With our aging parents, the opposite occurs.

We the adult children have been enjoying our independence from our parents while they take care of themselves.

And they have been enjoying their independence from us as well.

Then aging creeps up on them.

Physically and mentally, they begin to diminish and to become more vulnerable to more things in life.

We adult children have this picture of them as all-capable and of not needing us at all.

Then it begins to slowly dawn on us (and on them) that they need us in ways they didn’t just a short while ago.

The Unwelcome Role Reversal

As they journey through their physical maladies, through their major health crisis, through all the frailties of old age, the unwelcome role-reversal picks up pace.

Both of us now have to let go of our independence from each other.

We begin to go with them to their doctors appointments, to check more on their welfare, to safeguard them from telephone scammers and solicitation letters, to be more aware of signs of mental decline and to notice what everyday things they can’t do anymore.

So we help them.

And they really don’t want to be helped.

But they’ll keep needing us as adult children to help them more and more.

Until they day arrives when they are as dependent upon us as adult children as we were upon them as small children.

The temptation on both sides is to pretend it isn’t happening and to resist/avoid the inevitable.

The Final Letting Go

Sooner or later, this letting go will involve varies kinds of death.

The death of their independence through physical immobility or being bed-ridden.

The death of their ability to manage their own living space or their finances or their medical needs.

The death of their mind through Alzheimer’s or some other senility.

The death of their body through the final illness that eventually takes them from us.

Neither they, nor we, have any choice.

Both of us will face a series of increasing losses in more and more areas until the ultimate loss happens.

The Doctor’s Implied Message

I spent a week with my almost 87 year-old mother and took her to her doctor for a routine check up.

It surprised me when the doctor made an excuse to have me step outside of the exam room with him.

He mentioned that their plan is to do nothing heroic for my mom if she develops any new medical condition.

I think the phrase, “letting nature take its course”, was used.

Over the next few days, I found myself with a low-grade spiritual fever.

Like something subterranean was at work in my soul–and it wasn’t something happy or positive.

The full import of what the doctor was trying to tell me finally emerged into my conscious mind.

Whether I like it or not, I am going to lose my second parent in the foreseeable future.

A Matter of the Heart

I already know that fact intellectually and have been consciously preparing myself.

Or so I thought.

But deep down, buried in secret, my heart has been quietly protesting and holding on.

Like the parent that wants to keep a child in dependency because of the pain of losing them to adulthood, I, too, was holding on emotionally.

I really don’t want to lose her….ever.

But I’m going to lose her…eventually and probably in the next few years.

So I took this sorrow to the Lord and was able to say the following:

“OK, Lord.  My heart is finally ready to let my mom go.   If You take her, I’m at peace with that now.”

It was almost as if my spiritual fever broke and serenity once more took over.

Which brings me back to letting go.

Which brings me back to the odd parallel between us letting go of our adult children, and us letting go of our parents’ independence and then their physical presence on earth.

It’s been harder than I imagined.

But I’m getting there.