As much as I laugh about OPD, it's also a cover up. It's so hard to watch your parents age and in the aging fail in health. Through illness they are no longer able to do and enjoy some of the activities they once enjoyed. Sometimes they focus more on what they have lost instead of what they still have. I suppose we are all guilty of that.
It's hard being the child and suddenly having to be parent to your parents. You worry they leave the stove on, or forget medication, or will get into a car accident. They don't handle money as well as they once did. And it's hard to know the boundaries. How do you tell them to give up their independence by handing over the check book or the car keys? Most of all, you want to scream, "Not my monkey!" (translation: not my responsibilty), but if not mine whose?
I'm not an evil person because I laugh about OPD. I'm scared. Might not be very long before someone drops a nursing home on me.
2 comments:
Very astute observations, and very transparent of you to voice them.
You sound like a very caring person to me---an evil person would be making out the registration at the nursing home, not figuring out how to cart the weebles around.
And then there is the "do unto others" idea. Might be your children will one day look at your example and how you handled aging parents.
There's probably a chinese proverb about laughter is better than going nuts or something too.
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