This Getting Old Is Getting Old

One of Dolly Parton's famous quotes about life is this: "The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain."

Life and its adventures - love, friendships, travel, children - all contained in the rainbow.  They are the days, the people, the excitement, joys, and festivities that we live for.  

But then, oh the rain...

Heartaches, heartbreaks, disappointments, disasters, violations, let downs, and loss - that rain is heavy and we rarely know when it will fall into our lives.  We just know it will.

Some of the heaviest of thunderstorms come when we not only feel ourselves aging, but begin to question the reflection in the mirror.  When laugh lines begin to make us frown.  When the collagen of youth heads south on our cheeks, gathering for a wobbly Coachella at our jawlines.  When simply sleeping wrong can set our backs to spasm, and a single sneeze can take us to the couch.  

And then there is the rain that comes as we see our parents enter the final days of their lives.  The rainbows are harder to find, but we search anyway, clinging to them when they peek through the clouds.  

The last few years have been that emotional meteorological mix for our family.  

There was the rainbow of celebrating my father's birthday in Las Vegas, complete with his winning run at a craps table.  The rain came down on that trip as well when he and my mother revealed to us that Dad had been diagnosed with Parkinson's.  For three years we battled the rain clouds and grasped at the rainbows, their colors fading and becoming harder and harder to find as dementia and Parkinson's held hands and took him from us.

It was during those years that I really started to understand the whole "parenting your parents" thing.  Trying to find the balance between advocating for them, protecting them, and doing what is in their best interests while preserving some semblance of their  autonomy is an almost impossible task.  Whether you are taking the keys to the car away, humoring them through a hallucination, or doing the soul crushing job of a POA and placing them where they cannot wander off or harm themselves, watching your parents age is so very hard.

Dad passed in November of 2021.  Breathtakingly fast given that I had spent the summer helping them sell their home and move into an assisted living community.  But when the true slide came, it came fast.

Then suddenly the calls came from North Carolina.  Both of Rudy's parents were facing challenges that would prevent them from ever being able to go back and live in their home alone.  I disappeared into their lives for three months to deal with their home that had been in Grandpa Rudy's family for well over a century, with well over a century's worth of stuff crammed inside.  There was the finding of a facility for them, the sudden need to separate them into two facilities, and the daily trips to bring his Mom to the house to go through pile after pile of memories.  Those were the days I saw the glimmers of rainbows.  His mom and I became so much closer, we laughed, we joked, we did the best we could.

Rainclouds would continue to threaten as his Dad would be hospitalized and then moved to a rehab facility where he would live out the remainder of his life.  I will never forget the emotional storm that passed over both Rudy's and his mother's faces when we visited Grandpa Rudy and he did not recognize them.  My mother-in-law is one of the strongest people I have ever known, and she gives stoicism a whole new definition, but her heart took an unrecoverable hit that day.  As did Rudy's.

Watching a parent lose not only themselves to dementia, but every emotional tether that ties them to you is brutal.  Where do the memories go?  The love, the bonds?  Our brains are wonderous, but they are also mysteries.  We are left to simply love the person who considers us nice strangers.  Grandpa Rudy left us last July. 

In that time, Marilyn has soldiered on.  As has my mother.  Alone in a world they inhabited for so long with a life partner.  And in my mind, I often have to fight the thought that they are in filing cabinets just waiting to pass, too.  Nice filing cabinets, mind you, but still, in facilities that will ultimately manage their way out of this life.

When we moved to Florida several months back, fate put us in the same town as someone who came to our lives through this blog.  Came, fit, and stayed.  She is family, she is part of the fabric of my life, Rudy's, our kids, and now Marilyn's.  Debbie welcomed Marilyn into her assisted living community just over a month ago and has seen how happy she has been there.  Enjoying outings, happy hours, craft classes, her own apartment, surrounded by her things.  Having her so close has meant that I go over every week and we go shopping, hang out, Facetime the great grandbaby together.  With Rudy we go out to eat, enjoy cocktails, and have been planning so many things we want to do with her here.

Just three weeks ago she got to finally meet Marlowe when Culley and Sean brought her to Florida for a week.  She was enchanted with her great granddaughter and getting to see her first granddaughter again.  Just last week she and I had a fun shopping excursion to Ross where we dove into the racks and each came away with a bundle of new items for summer.  One week ago she went on a planned outing to Bealls.  She had never been to one before.  Verdict? Meh.

Rainbows, so many and so bright we have needed sunglasses.

And then came the rain.  Unexpected, dark, torrential.  Last Thursday she was sent to the ER - what they now know was a stroke, congestive heart failure, pneumonia, kidney issues.  She has been there since then.

We get it.  She is almost 90.  And like so many who attain this age, certainly frail in so many ways, but Marilyn is also a force.  Independent, cognitively sharp, a woman who has always known what she wants, and who suffers no bullshit.  

Yet belligerence is no equal to a failing body.  And so the rain has continued to fall for almost a week.  Rains that are now set to sweep her away - we just don't know for sure when.

She has been adamant for days that she does not "want it anymore" - no more doctors, hospitals, tests, needles, scans, scopes.  Her repeated pleas have been that we take care of each other, the kids, the grandbaby.  Debbie has been instructed that she has to take care of us.  But then, Marilyn is a mother, and this is how a mother works right to the end - the concerns, the worries, the love is all about her people, not herself.

We are honoring her wishes.  We know her, we know what she wants, what she does not want.  (Frankly, if we lived in a progressive state that allowed it, she would have chosen physician assisted passing by now.)  With the help of her doctors at the hospital, treatments were discontinued.  Hospice has been engaged, she has been discharged, and Debbie has taken her under her care back at her facility.  Debbie's staff will work alongside hospice to insure as much comfort and stability as possible for Marilyn in the time she has left.

And who knows, even with her plethora of daunting health issues, she may rally and we will have more time to find more rainbows.  We simply cannot know.  I'd like to think she is too stubborn to die right away, but I also know she is stubborn enough to make it happen if she can.  We know she is ready to go find Grandpa Rudy and Rudy's brother, George.  I sense them both watching and waiting, ready to take her on the next adventure.  She has always loved to travel...

So in the meantime, I'm again contemplating life, death, and the aging that gets us from the beginning to the end.  I look in the mirror and while I may hate some of the artifacts of my own years, I am determined to keep finding the rainbows in my life.  I have a man who I love beyond measure who loves me in return.  I have three children who are the air I breathe.  I have a sister who told cancer to fuck off and is finding her own rainbows after the storm.  And I have a granddaughter who is the embodiment of every color in every rainbow I have ever seen, my own personal pot of gold.

You know, Dolly also said, “We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.”

This getting old may be getting old, but I have seen the alternative up close.  I'll take the wrinkles and the rain for a chance to adjust my sails and cruise into the sunshine a bit longer.  There are still rainbows to behold.

Love your people.  The years and tears go by so, so fast.

Comments

[Glenda Monroe]

So many of our own loved ones have passed away too, including our oldest daughter, 6 yrs. ago. My husband and I are getting to the age where we’re getting our affairs in order and making sure our two other children know our wishes. In Oregon we do have the Death With Dignity Act available and they each know our feelings about using it.
We hopefully still have many more beautiful sunrises and sunsets to experience as well as to catch those rainbows and we want to live each and every day loving our children, grandchild, great grandchildren and all of our family and friends as much as we can ❤️

[Jodi]

I fully wish each and every state would have a Death with Dignity rule. Would save so much heartache and pain. My mom’s bestie CHOSE her death date, or, as she put it, her “expiration date” . Made things so much easier!