It doesn’t matter if you are the most methodical, organized student of life, someone who prides herself on doing all the research: the pregnancy books, parenting blogs and LinkedIn searches. No one tells you that there isn’t an advice column or Google search that prepares you for the moment when you realize that you are a parent to your parent.
The “Sandwich Generation” is real. It is messy and hard and beautiful, and it will fill you up and break your heart in ways that you could never have imagined.
I knew my mother’s sounds and they made me feel safe
Snapshot: I’m six years old, sitting at my desk in Mrs. Lessler’s classroom. Quiet in class, I’m a pleaser—a child who’s constantly worried about doing things wrong. But Mrs. Lessler is strict, gray hair pulled back in a severe bun, and not easily pleased. I’m bent over my book, but distracted by a noise in the hallway: the clicking heels of someone walking and the jangling of car keys.
I know that sound—keys hitting against a keychain with a silver whistle. I know it before I see her: my mother. She’s stopping by the classroom to deliver my forgotten lunch. In one instant my heart lightens; the keys still as she stops in the doorway to hand Mrs. Lessler my lunch. It’s such a gift to get to see my mother in the middle of the school day; a small reprieve from worrying about my math worksheet. I know those keys; I know her sound before I see her face, and it’s the safest sound in the world to me.
Now my mother waits for the sound of my keys
My mother was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease over 25 years ago. Medications kept the disease relatively in check for years, but in the five years since my father’s passing, she’s transitioned from a four-bedroom house to Independent Living in a retirement community to Assisted Living.
Her Parkinson’s now has companions: congestive heart failure, kidney disease, and a heartbreakingly long medication list. Even if I had a handicap accessible house and didn’t have a job, I could not take care of her myself—her medical needs are beyond what I can provide.
But she doesn’t love being in a one-bedroom apartment by herself, and my guilt every time I leave her is crushing. I worry constantly about her being lonely, and hate that she’s now the one who listens for the sound of my keys in the hallway, coming to see her.
Even when my mother wanted to get away she took me with her
Snapshot: I’m 10, and my mother has taken up jogging. A self-proclaimed klutz, she always said she had no idea how she produced three athletic children when her only sporty activity growing up was fencing. But each night after the dinner dishes were done, my mother laced up her sneakers and jogged around our neighborhood.
Years later, I see why she did it: she had a husband who traveled internationally for weeks at a time and three kids under the age of 10 who required constant attention and rides to soccer games and basketball practices. She was seeking what any mother needs: an hour to herself where no one was asking her for a snack or a ride or a playdate. But every time I saw her pull running shoes out of the closet, I begged to go along.
Her hour of alone time became an hour of me pounding the sidewalk next to her, chattering non-stop. Whatever vision she had of peace and quiet disappeared before we hit the end of the driveway. But not one single time did she tell me I couldn’t run with her.
Now I’m the one who runs, but not with my mom
My mother started walking with a cane 10 years ago, but Parkinson’s is a thief and balance is one of the first things it takes. The cane was replaced by a walker, and then a wheelchair. She hates the wheelchair; it limits us more than we ever imagined. A simple outing for lunch or a pedicure requires plotting out parking spaces, table room and high curbs.
My mother has a physical therapist who comes to work with her twice a week, and while she’s made progress, Parkinson’s is a degenerative disease. She can walk short distances with a walker, but her days of venturing beyond the hallway of her building in anything but a wheelchair are over.
She can’t understand why my girlfriends and I like to travel to run races together, and I have to remind her every time that she’s the reason I became a runner. She’s the one who taught me that most of life’s stresses can be solved on a run with sneakers pounding pavement under a moonlit sky. It’s one of the greatest gifts she ever gave me, but she’s so far from that person now that she can’t quite understand; it’s a gift in vain.
My mother sewed my prom dresses
Snapshot: I’m 15 and going to prom. A late bloomer, I’m painfully skinny and unable to really fill out any dress properly. I don’t look like any of the girls in the magazines, so I’m convinced that nothing will work with my bony collarbones and flat chest. My mother tells me not to worry. We create a dress design piecemealed together from torn-out pages of Seventeen Magazine then head to the fabric store.
Without a pattern, she works on the floor of her sewing room, cross-legged with silver pins in her mouth, occasionally calling me in to remeasure my waist or hips. The end result is beautiful and perfect and fits me better than anything I’ve ever owned. My mother made all of my formal dresses throughout high school and college, each one of our own design.
When my parents go to sell their house years later, my mother laughs that the next owners will be finding tiny blue sequins from my senior prom dress for years to come in her sewing room carpet. She will not miss that brown shag carpet when the house sells, but loves that those sequins remind her of the daughter she misses who’s in graduate school far away.
Fine motor skills are really tough for my mom now
Fine motor skill tasks are now difficult for my mother. The woman who once sent long handwritten cards to me now struggles to write her name legibly to endorse a check or sign a medical form. I desperately try to help her maintain a sense of independence. But it’s so much faster for me to sign her name or fill out her forms, and I hate myself for my impatience.
The iPad medical forms present a particular challenge—touch screens and Parkinson’s are a terrible combination. My mother doesn’t understand that if she wants something hemmed, I now have to take it to a seamstress. She asks what happened to her sewing machine, and I cannot bring myself to tell her that I donated it when she moved into Assisted Living, knowing she wasn’t capable of ever using it again. I don’t want to be the person who takes away her sewing machine or steals her chance to sign her name. I feel guilty for all of it.
My mother was such a big help when my kids were young
Snapshot: I’m 32, with a toddler and a 3-month-old who doesn’t sleep and is prone to fits of uncontrollable crying. My husband has a new job with long hours, and I’m working part-time while training for my first marathon. I’m so mentally and physically exhausted that there are days I can barely see straight.
Casey, my toddler, has boundless energy—he doesn’t stop talking, running, or climbing from the moment he wakes up until he goes to bed. But my mother’s patience knows no bounds. She takes him out for the afternoon at least twice a week to the zoo or library or her neighborhood playground.
Casey sits still in her lap while she reads story after story—the same spine-faded books she read to me as a child. She lets him pick out toys at Target and make a mess on her living room floor. Best of all, he comes home tired and less demanding of my attention while I try to figure out why his baby brother isn’t sleeping more than four hours at a time.
I feel guilty asking my son to help with my mom
That hyperactive toddler now stands at 6’4” and is my mother’s biggest fan. I feel guilty asking for so much of Casey’s help with her when he’s home from college. I want him to remember her as the grandmother who bought McDonald’s Happy Meals and rode the merry-go-round with him seven times straight at the zoo, not someone who needs help cutting her food or being lifted from wheelchair to car.
But Casey inherited her patience, and it’s such a gift. They are pals; he brings her take-out burgers to eat while they watch Hallmark movies. Last Christmas, I gave her a digital picture frame loaded with photos from her childhood through the present. I have so many photos of my mother with both of my boys, but especially Casey.
We sit together and watch the frame, which rotates photos every 30 seconds. Seeing her life in these snapshots helps her feel connected to people, and for that I’m grateful. But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t break my heart to see laid out in pictures what Parkinson’s has taken from her. We enjoy the photos together and try not to talk about how much has changed.
No one talks about the heaviness of caring for a declining parent
Before becoming parents, we have books, blogs, and advice columns; we learn how to potty train, manage the teenage years, and survive our first kid going to college. But no one speaks about the heaviness of caregiving. And if I’m being honest, sometimes I don’t want it; my heart can only hold so much weight.
I long to have someone still worry about me, someone who will not turn out the front porch light or truly fall asleep at night until I’m home safe. It’s never a burden to be the one to arrange all of my mother’s doctor appointments, manage her finances, purchase her toiletries, make sure she’s happy and well cared for, but sometimes I want to be just a daughter again.
Recently I was leaving her apartment when one of the nurses stopped me by the elevator and said, “Ooooh, your mama loves bragging about you!” For a moment I felt like I was 10 years old again. I cried all the way down to the first floor.
Time is a fluid construct for my mother now. She sometimes gets confused about where she lives, especially at night. She’ll call me and ask if I’m coming home or staying at a friend’s house, as if I’m back in high school. But always I tell her, “Yes, you can leave the front porch light on for me. I’ll be there, and I’ll come kiss you goodnight.”
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