And why it deserves attention
“I forgot to put the car in park.”
Eight words from my mother that made my stomach drop. She lives a plane ride away. And I’d just begun a new job.
And my son was flying out for his freshman year of college the next day.
Aging isn’t for the feint of heart. And aging with aging parents and aging kids is…well, a damn lot of aging.
No one tells us that growing pains continue well past puberty and adulthood. There’s the silent, invisible growing pain of watching your aging parent decline and its counterpart, the ache of seeing your once baby leave the figurative nest.
I’m well aware that to have both of the aforementioned are blessings. But life is a double-edged sword: with every gift arrives the inevitability of its temporal nature.
The Meat of the Sandwich
There’s ample information about caring for aging parents. We are told the Empty Nester phase of life is a time of celebration — a new chapter to embrace. Yet while both are true, there needs to be an acknowledgment of the figurative shoe that drops when dwelling in this space between decline and ascension.
We middle-agers are the meat between the old and new. We are the great observers of what no longer is. Great because it is only from the vantage point of middle age that we can — I believe — perceive the mountains from hills. The lens of time has granted us the vision to see our parents’ life trajectory and the exciting journey before our young adult children.
And oh the mourning we feel for the loss of what is no more. Yet instead of acknowledging this palpable ache, it remains like a spiritual albatross we carry.
There is another way.
Ironically, when we speak to the loss we experience, only then can the celebration of what’s to come can find a safe space to enter.
I am mourning the mother who once loved driving cars, who snapped her gum in a way that this grown woman once considered was the coolest thing ever. I mourn the loss of her ability to get on planes, to take memory for granted, who could wash and dress herself.
But I’m also mourning the weight of my newborn son in my arms, the sound of his pre-pubescent voice, the sacred moments of reading a bedtime story together, or the day he learned to ride a bike — the memory of his face beaming with pride.
It’s okay to mourn. It’s actually necessary. We can’t let go of something we never allow ourselves to first embrace.
What the Meat Needs
This “meat” needs to acknowledge the tender pull between her mother and her grown children. Guilt doesn’t serve anyone — including the meat of a sandwich.
We can’t give so much that we lose ourselves. It’s that oxygen mask analogy that serves us well in this temporary role between generations: we must put the oxygen mask on ourselves before we can help our parents and grown kids.
Of course, this isn’t always possible, but it provides much-needed guidance in our emotionally (and often physically) demanding world of intergenerational caretaking.
I was planning to visit my son at college next month. Instead, I will be spending time with my mother. I asked him how he felt about it — Guilt flitting around me like a pesky mosquito.
“You need to be with her. I’m fine. I’ll see you Thanksgiving.”
The compassion and ease with which he said those words told me everything: he was a young man now — worlds away from the preschooler who once wrapped his arms around my legs so tightly I couldn’t walk.
Now it was me who was holding onto him, not wanting to let go — growing pains indeed.
These days, I acknowledge the Mosquito of Guilt flitting about me when I choose to do something for me. It’s there but my mindset is increasingly becoming its own repellant.
Author, Educator, Actor www.sheri-jacobs.com Author of THE FRIENDSHIP DIET and DREAM WRITE .
Sheri Jacobs 