It’s an epidemic, adults leaving their aged, sometimes sick parents to take care of themselves and to spend their latter years without their family.
Their children leave them alone, in isolation and having to deal with the stresses and discomforts of becoming old and, quite frankly, like a little child again.
More so than not, people feel that if they want to live their lives it will include loosing the ties from those who gave them life.
I suppose there is a sense of freedom that is associated with this movement of people taking a break from the old folks, who are caged and kept captive in their own bodies.
How do you cut the ties from the reason you exist?
It’s like a man who gains all the riches yet forfeits his soul; it’s maddening and nonsensical, but also overwhelmingly sad.
It goes without saying, there are many things that can stand as reasons why and even how an adult child can forsake his or her parent, but can any be valid for the extreme?
While on a job for the City Times recently, I met someone who shook my perspective of being old.
A certain *Ms Jones, who has an ailment that makes even moving in her own house nearly impossible – she could barely walk on her own.
She uses a walking stick and recently received a wheelchair, which she struggles to use without assistance, let alone open.
Daily activities have become a little more than a hassle; they have become a serious pain, considering both her legs have now given in to arthritis.
Does that catch your heart strings? Allow me to dab into it a bit further.
To put it simply, she is stuck in her house a lot of the time and cannot go anywhere when and as she pleases because she is ailing and in excruciating pain.
Her children all live in another country, much too far away from her, and her only hope lies in the prospect of death.
She says more than once, that she would rather die than live the way she is doing.
“I’m just waiting for God to take me, there is no point in living when you are like this,” were her words.
Exaggeration? No … Reality.
The reality is, while she should be spending the latter days of her life basking in the love, care and comfort of her children and loved ones, she is constantly faced with pain in isolation.
Hello?
How does that work?
There are too many untold stories that share an eerie similarity to that of Ms Jones, of an elder dying on the inside and withering on the out.
Might we consider, there is nothing worse than leaving your own flesh and blood, your old mother or father – or both, to live rejected and to die alone.
There is no reason plausible enough to abandon your parent when they’ve probably cared for and loved you the best way they knew how.
Instead of chasing after freedom, it is better to say “thank you, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me and now it’s my turn to take care of you”.
Might we consider, there is not a conflict, misunderstanding, or even a feeling that can make it acceptable, except to reveal your own heart, son and daughter out there.
*Not her real name.
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