Caring for the person who raised you
One in four adults will look after an ageing parent. Four carers describe the tenderness, the exhaustion and the role reversal nobody prepares them for.
- ageing
- care
The first thing Daniel noticed was that his mother had stopped reading the newspaper. She still bought it, and she still folded it on the kitchen table in the same way, but the crossword was blank. For a woman who had done it in pen every morning for forty years, it was the first sign that something had changed. Eighteen months later he moved her into the spare room of his house and started learning the names of medications he had never heard of.
Daniel is one of four carers I spoke to for this piece. Their situations differ. One is caring for a father with heart failure, another for a mother with dementia, a third for a grandmother who lives two hundred miles away. What they share is the sense that the role arrived gradually, without a clear moment when they agreed to it, and that by the time they noticed they were doing it every day.
What did you expect caring to be like?
Daniel: I expected it to be a series of tasks. Shopping, appointments, paperwork. And there is a lot of that. What I did not expect was how much of it is emotional. You are making decisions about someone's life that they used to make for you, and they know it, and you know it, and neither of you says so.
Gwen, who cares for her father in the house where she grew up: Nobody warns you about the tenderness. People talk about exhaustion, and that is real. But there are moments when you are washing his hair and he goes very quiet, and you realise he is letting you do this because he trusts you. That is a huge thing to be given. It is also heavy.
What is the hardest part?
Daniel: Telling her no. She used to be the one who said no to me. Now I have to say it about the car, the stairs, the phone calls at three in the morning. I have to be firm about things she does not think she needs help with, and then I have to sit with her while she is upset that I was firm.
What would you tell someone starting today?
Rasa: Write things down. Ask the person what they want while they can still tell you. And let other people help, even when it feels easier to do it yourself. You are not the only person who loves them, even if you are the one who is there most often.
Daniel: Be kind to yourself on the days you do not manage it well. Nobody is good at this from the start. You just keep showing up, and eventually the showing up becomes the thing you are both able to rely on.