Sometimes the archer reverses the roles.
I’ve always been moved by the words of Kahlil Gibran, who compares the relationship between parents and children as bows and arrows in the hands of God. The parents are portrayed as the bow, but I think sometimes they are the arrows.
Many years ago, a coworker announced his wife was expecting their first child. He reverently quoted his wife, saying that she called raising a child “shaping a soul”. The older, oh-so-wise but still young mothers snickered at this. I believe one even muttered “Oh brother!” under her breath. Yes, the decision to bring a child into the world sounds like a holy vocation, and often it is.
When a toddler throws an uncontrollable, inconsolable tantrum in a public place, a soul is absolutely being shaped, but I don’t think it’s the two-year-old. You don’t have to be a parent to understand as we’ve all witnessed meltdowns of kiddos.
I’m not thinking of the first two decades of parenthood, as each year in that time frame holds its own challenges. Instead, I’m reflecting on how adult children impact their parents, and how I’ve felt role reversal in my own life.
I was about 36 years old when my mother took ill. She’d been having some shortness of breath and felt worn out. I was concerned enough to urge her to mention it to her physician. I still recall her face telling me about expressing her symptoms to him, and his dismissive reply: “You’re not a spring chicken anymore.” Her generation held doctors in such high regard that she unquestioningly accepted his pronouncements. Don’t dispute The Doctor! She looked ashamed for bothering him.
About a month later, she was diagnosed with Stage 3-C colon cancer, which eventually would take her life.
If I could go back and accompany her to the appointment, I would not accept that horrendously ageist “spring chicken” answer. Sadly, our culture hasn’t progressed much towards stopping ageism. But I digress.
A simple blood test would have revealed her anemia, and her disease might have been diagnosed at a treatable stage. Colon cancer is curable if caught early.
(BTW, are you over 50 years old? Have you had a colonoscopy? If not—STOP READING RIGHT NOW AND CALL YOUR DOCTOR!! I’M NOT JOKING!)
I recall Mom being admitted to the hospital after Dad brought her to the ER, when she simply couldn’t function. Her hemoglobin level was so critically low that she was admitted to the ICU and immediately received transfusions. She denied experiencing any rectal bleeding. Perhaps she didn’t notice any. Perhaps it had been so minute and gradual she could dismiss it as a hemorrhoid. More likely, as she was such a private person, she wouldn’t admit rectal bleeding, if she noticed any.
Since colon cancer was suspected, a colonoscopy was performed the next day. I recall sitting in the waiting room with my Dad and siblings. The gastrointestinal doctor told us she had a tumor, and was completely certain that it was malignant. We could see her now, as she was awake.
As we walked down the hall, Dad turned to me in anguish and said, “I can’t tell her she has cancer. You have to do it.” I nearly fainted at his request. I grasped the handrail that is in nearly every hospital corridor and hung on, trying to compose myself.
In that single moment, I became an adult. None of the hallmarks of “adulthood” hit me until then. Not my driver’s license, not marriage, not children; no single event you can point to as a rite of passage mattered.
Turnabout.
I had roughly sixty seconds to go from her baby to her “parent”. Sixty seconds to figure out how to confirm what she probably already dreaded. For those of the “Greatest Generation”, cancer was so feared that it was often referred to as “the Big C”.
Now I had to be the adult.
As the only college graduate of their five kids, and as a medical laboratory technologist, they relied on me to explain everything to them and navigate the tsunami of medicine which arrived after the earthquake diagnosis. I understood lab testing, but I was still new in my career. In time, I’d come to understand more about the processes of diseases, but back then, I scrambled to learn what was happening to her body. And what might happen to her body. I was fortunate to work with kind pathologists who reviewed medical documents with me. Mom’s care plan included removal of half her colon. Before she was even in recovery, one pathologist brought me into the grossing area (the section of a lab where pathologists dissect organs and tissue specimens), and displayed this evil entity that had changed all our lives. I wonder if anyone else has ever had the experience I had: watching a section of my mother’s body laid on a wax slab and cut apart. Odd to think of this now, but I spent nine months in intimate proximity to that colon. I hadn’t been this close in decades.
After Mom passed, Dad sank into a deep depression. Although already formally retired when she took ill, he had a part-time job. That ended as he became her caregiver, because to him, she was his everything. He took over all the household duties: grocery shopped, cooked, cleaned, did the laundry and paid the bills. When she died, with hours and hours of time to fill, he turned to us kids. Honestly, we feared he’d die of a broken heart. It does happen. It is real.
It’s character-building to fulfill the needs of a parent when you still rely on their advice for your own concerns. Decades later, they still shape your soul.
Us five kids all had roles to fill. One sister came to eat dinner with him four nights a week for over a decade. Another came every Saturday night. My other sister and my brother visited and did what they could, although we didn’t realize my sister was incubating a rare cancer that would kill her, and my brother was already exhibiting early stages of dementia.
Over time, Dad grew to accept the new norm. What else could he do? But now, entering his 80s, he had illnesses of his own, and just like a man of the “Greatest Generation” he behaved as though nothing was wrong. I drove him to his many doctor appointments: nephrologist, urologist, cardiologist, ophthalmologist, and general practitioner. I even took him for acupuncture and hypnosis. (That’s a story for another day.) His hearing was so poor, even with aids, he sometimes gave odd responses to healthcare practitioners’ questions. I’d get so annoyed by the ones who addressed me instead of him, or who treated him like an infant. Don’t call my Dad “sweetie” and pat his arm. Give him the respect he deserves and let him maintain his dignity!
Each of us had to fill the role that my Mom had held. We needed Dad to feel loved. We needed Dad to feel he was still needed, because he was. We needed Dad to have a reason to carry on when he didn’t feel like carrying on.
At some point, God willing, I will live long enough that my kids will role reverse with me. I’m getting a smidgen of that now, as there are physical tasks which benefit from a younger back, and yep, I’m guilty of asking them to explain what my smart phone just did.
Near the end of their lives, I diapered and bathed both of my parents. I fed my father his last earthly meal, and at his request, shaved his dear face hours before he passed. Even before these acts of love, we “kids” often took charge.
No, Dad, you’re 88 years old and shouldn’t be up on your roof cleaning your gutters. We’ll get it taken care of. Too hard to understand what the rep is saying on the phone? No problem. We got it.
I hope I can accept my kids’ decisions gracefully and with gratitude when inevitability roles between us slowly flip. Life isn’t a circle; it is the changing of tides.
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