April is again the cruelest month. The weather is unpredictable and we all wait for Spring to appear. It’s a busy family month with birthdays for my two sons and my wife. It is amazing to think that both my sons have grown into adults with adult responsibilities. I still think of them as children and have to continue to remind myself not to give them advice and just to offer them my love.
I still think this aging thing is difficult to accept. I know I cant do many of the things I used to- or if I do, it does take longer to recover. The memory lapses don’t bother me that much. It doesn’t seem that different from when I was younger. I don’t think even death concerns me right now. I know it will happen and it is certainly a reality I have to face every day. I see the music, film and sports stars of my youth all fading away. I can even criticize their appearance and think that I don’t look as bad as they do.
What has been bothering me is thought of lack of function. The television show “60 Minutes” had an episode this week about Alzheimer’s. They presented an actual couple they had been following for 10 years. The wife was diagnosed in her mid 60s. Her deterioration over the ten-year period was graphic and tragic not only for her, but also for her caretaker husband. Fortunately this is not a common condition in either of our families, but both my parents and my wife’s mother died fairly young. I hope if this does happen, my sons will convince which ever one of us is the caretaker to make a decision to let go.
I saw a lot of families struggling with addiction and mental illness. The addict or person with mental illness certainly had their own struggles, but what always struck me was the impact on the family. I would spend a lot of therapy on the importance of setting limits and encouraging families to realize the effect this was having on their own lives. One family struggled with the husband’s heroin addiction for over 40 years. I remember a family conference after another period of relapse with the wife and adult children trying an intervention. Despite all their pleading and tears, the addict continued to say “I just like the high”. He had been using since he was 16 and had two lengthy prison terms on his resume. His wife just would not let go and it adversely affected her own health and her relationship with her children. I would see parents of rebellious adolescents trying everything to help their children only to begin blaming each other for what was happening. The whole concept of enabling and contributing to someone’s illness came out of studying alcoholic and addicted families. The idea of giving someone “just one more chance” is often just a way for the problem to continue. One husband spent over a million dollars on his wife’s treatment. She never got better until after they divorced. Another father would send his son thru endless treatments and hospitalizations. He would always blame the therapists when his son relapsed. He could never understand how his constant rescuing and helping his son avoid consequences was one of the real reasons therapy was not working. He also had difficulty seeing what was happening in his own life. His marriage was failing, his weight was out of control, and he had developed diabetes.
The 60 Minutes episode showed the progression of the illness in just not the wife, but also the real deterioration of the husband. He talked about his own depression and thoughts of suicide. He was committed to caring for her, but finally after 10 years, he could not do it anymore and agreed to place her in a nursing facility. I’m sure he had very mixed feelings about this- both of guilt and relief. However he really had no other choice.
I think it’s this choice that I am thinking about. Our decision to move seemed somewhat impulsive, but it had been simmering away for a long time. I really did not want to move. I don’t like change. Maybe that is a real sign of ageing. However I finally realized that if something happened to me, my wife could not physically manage the home we lived in. Both of our sons were over an hour away and would have difficulty getting to us in an emergency. Now we are closer to our sons and this house is more manageable for my wife.
So what I simmer about now are all the senior concerns about illness and loss of ability to function. I certainly don’t want to be a burden on my family. I also would not want to get to the point of suicide or mercy killing. Right now I don’t really know what the answer is. This, like much of this stage of life, is just one more important thing to think and talk about.