Nothing can warm you up to be the daughter of ageing parents. Nothing is more disquieting than watching them progress into old age. Nothing can help you shelve the realisation that they are not invincible after all.
It hit me when my parents were visiting me at my business school for the graduation ceremony, to share moments of pride with several others. They have always wanted to be fully present with me in my “first-time” and “last-time” moments. When I left for college the first time seven years back, they attended college orientation with me, and they packed my cartons on the last day as I prepared to leave every summer throughout my undergraduate years. They said they could not fathom how the years went by so quickly as I was approaching yet another milestone, just as I cannot fathom how they have grown old.
It hit me when I observed myself getting edgy with my father as he conscientiously counted out money and handed it to a fruit vendor. Controlling the urge to deal the change myself, I hurried him up. I observed his drooping shoulders, his sluggish movements. His luxuriant head of curly hair had thinned and turned silver. His face had weathered, cheeks sunken and I could see wrinkles alongside his moustache, which had greyed too, just like his hair.
My parents did not have the same vigour and vitality in them anymore and the realisation was worse since I was not present to see it happen gradually and over a period of time. As my whole family spent time in different cities, I had found immense consolation in the act of going home, to my mother. During my undergraduate years, with my father posted in the same city as my college, I would go back home every vacation.
But once I started working, I shifted places, and going back home became a luxury. I started seeing less of my parents. While I still stock the fridge over the short weekends that I am home, I have seen even less of my parents in the last two years and only on these few visits did I see the changes that have happened in them.
Quite a few things have stayed the same with both of them reeling and whirling around the house or tending plants in the garden. They still buy all spices and prepare spice mixes at home from the root, with my father intently surveying every shop in the wholesale market for raw turmeric or dried red chillies. My mother takes great pride in her year-after-year supply of pickles, jams and preserves stored in tiny jars whose tin caps have lost their lustre over years.
My father still writes applications and letters to civil authorities or local newspapers to draw attention to any pending repair and maintenance jobs around the city. He carefully files a carbon copy of the letters and the receipts of dispatch in neatly indexed folders, yellowing and cracking with age. He still relentlessly enquires through the day if I am hungry, and my mother continues to summon me for a few animated rounds of board games.
But some things are different as their form begins to limit function. They are now exhausted by the afternoon and retire for a long nap. They doze off while talking about their little aches and niggles, as I stroke their hair.
While I prepare for the role of a carer to my parents, at times I sense a loss of authority in them. My parents have always prized self-sufficiency and independence. There was a lot of emphasis on togetherness while I was growing up, but they also encouraged a certain functional separateness. This has been a critical input in their own relationship and my upbringing. Now that they are getting older, they attempt to hold on to their ways, hence their independence. In the process, they are critical of every benign suggestion that I may have to offer.
I have realised that while they want to be cared about, they dread being cared for. Just like when I skimmed through the kitchen cabinet for expired condiments after chancing upon a food essence languishing in the refrigerator, my mother was visibly unsettled and took it as an affront. With my involvement making her feel as if her sense of self was being compromised, I knew at once that I am going to struggle with boundaries before I hit the caregiving sweet spot.
While they insist, resist and persist with their ways, I have started stepping back after planting an idea in their heads, only to bring it up a little later. It seems to be helping them with their ambivalent feeling of annoyance and love towards me.
At this point of time, I want to be fully present for them, just as they have always been present for me. I sit with old albums, studying their pictures from their youth and wondering about their accomplishments and failures. I ask them to recount stories I don’t know about their own childhood. They being the only witnesses to my entire life, I revisit our fond memories with them in detail.
My perception of age and distance during these few visits have led me to regard my parents more objectively. I have started seeing them as individuals with their own anxieties, gaffes, and regrets. I am trying to let them know they can never be replaced or discounted, and that they will always be needed — despite the inevitable fragility brought by advancing years.
baid.megha@gmail.com
