caring for an aging parent

I think that when we see an aging parent or an aging anyone, we see what lies ahead for us, and that prospect is frightening. Who will take care of us and how will they feel about it? My kids have already said that they are not looking forward to taking care of me because I am high maintenance now. Nicole and Tara said need to start soon to find a nursing home with good feng shui where they don’t wake the patients before 8 A.M and where they serve gourmet health food. For my part I have promised to keep my own teeth. Thank you very much, Carl.
Our parents are a buffer between us and death. Irrationally it seems that as long as we have a living parent we are protected from the grim reaper. I know that when Mom goes I become the oldest generation. Oh my gosh!! All of the vitamins, spas, plastic surgery, and good clean living won’t stop the inevitable. Yep, I am going to get old and feeble.
The role reversal is hard to absorb. When we care for our infants we expect them to be helpless and we even enjoy their dependence on us. I never objected to changing baby diapers and what is sweeter than a baby drooling while she sleeps? Obstinacy in a 3 yr old is expected and tolerable but in an adult it’s a little harder to take. I expect my 2 yr old not to understand all that I am saying but I’m not used to having to repeat or explain things to my very intelligent mother whose though processes continue to slow down. I want to shake her and say, “Stop it! You are scaring me. I just told you that 5 minutes ago. Please continue to be the same mother you have always been.”
When I get irritated with Mom and my patience is thin, I remember all that she has done for me –not just the expected things that all mothers do but the above and beyond things—like when I was 4 and the neighborhood bully, Mickey Bador, wouldn’t let me ride his sled, she raided the mad money that she was saving for a dress in the “will call” at Helmans to buy me my own sled,or the times she cut ALL the fat off my meat even though my dad said a little fat wouldn’t hurt me, and the time she came to get me after 2 days of overnight camp over the objections of my no-nonsense grandmother, saying, “there will be plenty of things she has to do in life and this is not one of them”, and all of the times that she gave me what she ordered and ate my hamburger because I liked what she ordered more. So I’ll wipe her mouth and clean her teeth and bring her fudge sundaes and real cokes in a bottle and thank God that I still have a mother to take care of.