The happiness of a passing moment

I have a good relationship with my in-laws. After 30 years of being one family they really like me 🙂 . I come around once or twice a week. I help them with little things – in their late seventies/early eighties they are still very independent. My ‘job’ is to create lightness and a positive atmosphere – jokes, laughter. It’s easy for me. My parents have been gone for some time and when my mother-in-law runs around the kitchen while I simply sit at the table and wait for my plate to be put in front of me, I feel like I am back in my childhood. And I am grateful for that.

In the last couple of years I’ve been noticing some changes in them – physical and emotional. I notice and I adjust. I adjust the way I react, when I realise they don’t remember or don’t hear something I said. When they suddenly get short-tempered and upset with something insignificant (in my view 🙂 ). When they tell me that I mislead them by giving them incorrect information, which I didn’t (this one is the hardest for me, but I am working on it 🙂 ). And it’s not because I have impeccable self-control (which I don’t 🙂 ). It’s because as much as I like them, they are not MY parents.

What I see, when I talk to my friends, is how hard it is for many of them to deal with the declining of their parents. They get upset and angry when their parents stop behaving the way they always behaved and start becoming different and difficult.

All our life we relied on our parents. We were the children. We are still their children. But now the whole situation is changing and we object! We still want to be able to come to them for emotional support and help. But instead we often have to deal with ‘childish’ behaviour. This is not something to accept easily.

I think there is another reason why we get so angry when we see their physical decline. I think we unconsciously project it onto ourselves: “Is this going to happen to me too? “ And it scares the hell out us! I don’t think we realise how deep our connection to our parents is. My mum passed away 25 years ago. She was 51. During the last 25 years I have gotten used to a life without her. I don’t have the medical condition that contributed to her early death. But one day I woke up and realised that I lived one day longer than my mum. How on earth this thought came into my head I would never know. It’s not that I was counting. Or maybe something in me was?

Our parents, people who always loved and supported us, start making our life difficult at some point. Well, they are not going to do it forever, because they are not going to be here forever. So, regardless how angry and frustrated they sometimes make us feel, we can try to remember to make this time together as enjoyable as possible, for them and for ourselves. After all – the memories of good times – this is what stays with us after people we loved are gone.