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Health & Fitness

Remembering the Good Times

Your aging parents are experiencing increasingly more health issues and it looks like the end isn’t as far off as you’d hoped.  How do you cope with the inevitable loss?

One of the best things you can do is continue to enjoy your time with them and build on the good family memories you’ve created throughout the years.  After they’re gone, all you’ll have are the memories.  And if you’re lucky, the good ones will supplant the difficult ones.

As soon as I brought my parents to San Diego so that I could look after them more closely, they both landed in the hospital for hip-replacement surgery.  Picture them in the matching wheelchairs they couldn’t negotiate in their rehab facility.  So I’d put Mom’s chair in front of my dad’s and ask him to push her while I pushed him.  We made little headway through the corridors, but we did have a great laugh and always remembered that day fondly.

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I took Mom out every Wednesday night, though Dad usually opted to remain in bed.  One Wednesday, when I picked her up for a visit to our favorite thrift store, it was pouring and I was afraid to let her out of the car on her walker.

That’s when we spotted a beautiful rainbow.  “Mom,” I suggested.  “Let’s follow it to see if we can find the pot of gold at the end.”

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We chased that rainbow for over an hour all through town, talking and laughing.  When the sky cleared, we headed to our favorite thrift store and, later, pizza joint.  Now, I think of Mom every time I see a rainbow.

Another rainy day, I pulled up to the entrance of the mall and asked a complete stranger if he’d walk Mom inside and find a place for her to sit while I parked the car.  When I joined her, she introduced me to the kind man, explaining that he worked for the shopping center and it was his job to make sure the disabled shoppers were comfortable and had company.  She sure created her own world!

Then, there are the false-teeth memories.  Those teeth never did stay in her mouth no matter what kind of dental glue we tried.  One night at a restaurant, Mom dropped her teeth on the floor and our waitress got down on all fours to retrieve them from under the table.  You can’t make memories like this on purpose.

After dinner, my mother asked if I had gas.  I said the food was great and so was my stomach.  She laughed and said she only wanted to tell me we’d passed a low-cost gas station.

Dad ate dinner in his room at his skilled-nursing facility, refusing to go to the dining room “with all those old people.”  So I walked my 85-year-old father to the bathroom mirror and asked him to take a look at himself.  “You’re no longer a spring chicken,” I told him, not able to maintain a straight face.

Even the frustrating times were a chance to build memories.  After an unusually trying Wednesday night, I was driving home and experienced something unusual.  Talking to myself, I asked for help getting through the tough times.  That’s when the wings of the plastic angel on my dashboard started moving without me have to wind them.

When Mom moved from her assisted facility to skilled nursing and still couldn’t maneuver her wheelchair, I gave her “driving” lessons in the courtyard.  She practiced maneuvering around chairs I set up for the occasions.  Although she never did get the knack of it, we did have some good laughs.

There are two memories that I still carry around from my mother’s last days.

I asked her how difficult it was to exist in a shrinking world confined to a bed in a small room.  She pointed to her sliding-glass doors and told me she spent her days enjoying the sunshine and the birds outside.  That was an important lesson for me.

On another visit, Mom said hello to me, calling me by her name.  “No Mom, that’s you; I’m Marsha.”

Her answer:  “I don’t think so; Marsha is much heavier than you are.”

Yes, I’d lost weight and she noticed, even though she wasn’t convinced who I was.

I won’t pretend that caregiving was easy; it was the hardest thing I ever did.  But it did give me a chance to view my parents in a whole new light and make some great memories.  Yes, I think we found that pot of gold.

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