Aging parent

[Ezra Pippen]

My parents were older than most of my friends' parents, especially my dad. Although I was faced with the realization that they were getting older, when I visited them when I was away at college, they were changing, but growing and doing things together.

A little background: I am home just for the winter as I am a seasonal employee for the DNR, and trying to pursue a career in wildlife biology/ecology and get myself into grad school. This was a swerve back into a field that I departed from after my BS, and the DNR position was my 1st good opportunity. I took it, and tied up my lease on my apartment, and all that. My mom just wanted me to come home for the winter, as it would be easier to save money, ect.

What I didn't realize was how much my dad was changing and how lonely and frustrated my mom was getting. My dad always was a to the point guy, but now he is a micromanager who oversees how coffee is done and if I do it 'wrong' lectures to me about how I just seem unwilling to listen and how if you're going to do it, you should dop it right. So I cave on the small things. Part of me feels guilty and knows that he's too with it to handle everything this way, and feel guilty, like I am being patronizing. And on the larger things, like him wanting to chauffer me everywhere, and on what I should be doing regarding a work out, and whether I need to be spending more than half the day helping mom, plus some minimal work, plus trying to keep going on the grad school search and wildlife tech position applications and background reading on a bunch of research projects; I try to be helpful, a good guest, chip in on housework, clean up after myself, but it never seems enough for him. If I sit down to read anything for any period of time he would chastise me. I solved that part by doing my reading at the library before or after work.

I know part of this is just him being bored out of his gourd and feeling isolated, and have been encouraging him to call people, and my brother to come over more often, and I have been doing thing, working, and hemore woodworking with him; that's usually been a comfortable groove for both of us, just doing our is a craftsmen with wood, and me not so much, so his help and insight i receive much better in th9is setting, and we seem to discuss things better. I realize that I don't have all the time in the world.

But, when we are outside of this environ, he wants to constantly be a part of every decision I make, and if I don't follow his advise to the letter, he gets hurt. I get frstrated sometimes and we argue, even though I know that this is something that is happening to him; he never was like this before, just always outspoken about his opinion. I know that he knows he is changing mentally and is getting this weird controlling streak. I just really don't know how to respond to it yet. I just have this horrible voice in the back of my mind that keeps saying, "why can't you just be who you were before, dad!"

I guesds any advise as to how to just back away from this a little and be a little more rational and fair to my dad without being patronizing would help.

[PenforPrez]

I know exactly where you're coming from. I've gone through a lot of the same.

My father turns 82 this month, and he came from a time and place none of us (including myself) understand. My dad grew up in the 1920's and 30's deep in the Missouri Ozarks. He basically grew up like Jed Clampett, and anybody's upbringing influences their view of the world.

My father is elderly and my mother is a brittle diabetic, and I was the last child at home. My parents wanted me to stay there and take care of them. They're not happy I left to start my own life and pursue my job in the big city. I never really realized until I moved away just how isolated and out of touch they are, pretty much on purpose.

In his younger years, my father was sort of the stereotypical blue collar union patriarchal male of the 50's and 60's. Had a wife that he cheated on repeatedly (and eventually divorced), had a nice home in the suburbs, had a son (my oldest brother) that he raised to be like himself, and lived life his own way. He was proud to be a Missourian, proud to be a World War II vet, proud to be union, proud to be a Democrat, and proud to be white. :rolleyes: Time has not tempered that ideology very much.

Then he met my mother and I came along, and I turned out differently than my father expected or wanted. But the world changed too much in the 80's and 90's; it wasn't the world my world my father knew. My father didn't understand why I wasn't banging every woman in town the way he did. He didn't understand why I didn't want to go into his union and thought it was a mistake for me to pursue a liberal arts education. He doesn't understand the fact I'm more intellectual and look at the world differently.

Now he's an octogenarian and he's being a cranky old fart. He's still a very physically strong man, and he's in good health for his age. He'll live well into his 90's, I'm convinced. But he just doesn't live for today anymore. Despite everything he and I went through in my teens and early 20's, I miss being with him so much. I plan on taking his birthday off coming up and going home to visit him.

In answer to your question, I've learned this. With an older parent, you have to understand that their past is radically different than what we can comprehend. Put yourself in their past. With my father, that's easy; we frequently go to our family gravesites up in the hills. You can't understand them, and they can't understand you. The generational gap is just too broad.

You just have to be patient. You have to appreciate what the two of you share. My father and I share a fierce passionate love of Missouri and St. Louis in particular. I love to sit with him and watch a Cardinals game with him. :) We love old country songs; I reject most modern pop culture as aesthetically void. We both appreciate old-fashioned country cooking, and he and I are both better cooks than my mother. :p We share that, and it's great.

I love my Dad. :)

As far as my mother, don't get me started on that crazy woman! :evil:

Paul

[erika36]

My mom lectures me about the dumbest things (like cutting onions right for example). I especially hate it when she forces me to try to cook. It's just plain not my talent, and I'd do it for me because if food is edible I don't care how it's done. But she doesn't get that I'm just not good at it and quite frankly don't care if I don't learn a lot of it.

She even flips out that I do the dishes in the left sink instead of the right sink. I thought she was going to have a stroke the first time she saw me doing the dishes in the left sink. She does them "in the right sink"! LOL! Almost everything I do I do it wrong and she has to show me "the right way". And she won't get off my case until I let her show me. Gaaawd how irritating. :rolleyes:

[Ezra Pippen]

I guess, I was just trying too hard to 'prepare emotionally', to compare to other people and their changes that they have had to face, and although it really helps to hear from you, I know that I just have to deal with my emotions about it. I had just had a major blowout fight after I had written that, and if I had just went through the emotions instead of bottling them up, it wouldn't have been as bad.

My dad also grew up in rural Missouri, near Columbia, and was the youngest of 15 kids, but three had died, one due to polio, before he was born. I forget how much things must have changed. He is not as set in stone as many older people are from long years of increasingly less flexible beliefs, infact, seem to age with much more flexibilty than many people I know. But I think some of the physical realities are coming into play now.

I am a younger child, and my parents don't want me to be their caregiver, but I worry about them. Its just recently my dad doesn't understand that I do errands and chores in the evening and mental work and reading when I am more focused. And I think just being here just seems to get my mom in the mothering mode. Plus we share some of the same interests, but she won't let me contribute if we do go on a hiking trip or camping trip. And I try to be clear that I cannot afford to be going to everything that she wants to do, but that just seems to pour fuel on the fire. Also, I cannot cobble together winter temp work and have a super flexible schedule. I wish she would reach out a little more instead of treating me as a 'paid friend'. I know to some extent that I just need to be gracious about a gift like that, but the fact that that just seems to encourage her more bothers me. She is more outgoing than I am, but is always busy(but often by choice) and enjoys the convenience of my being there, so much that she signed me up without my knowing for a volunteer wolf tracking program with her, ect. If I try to have a clear conversation with her, it ends up as an arguement of the ilk that I don't have my finances completely totgether, because I am still paying off a medical bill (the 20% not covered by my insurance at the time), to the thing where she doesn't want me to struggle like she did (she left home at 17); I try to reassure her that many of the things I have been doing, though not ideal, are not near as bad as the edge she was walking, but the reality is that I want tio take risks with my career that just seem to worry her to no end.

[Ezra Pippen]

I guess, I was just trying too hard to 'prepare emotionally', to compare to other people and their changes that they have had to face, and although it really helps to hear from you, I know that I just have to deal with my emotions about it. I had just had a major blowout fight right before I had written that, and if I had just went through the emotions instead of bottling them up, it wouldn't have been as bad.

My dad also grew up in rural Missouri, near Columbia, and was the youngest of 15 kids, but three had died, one due to polio, before he was born. I forget how much things must have changed. He is not as set in stone as many older people are from long years of increasingly less flexible beliefs, infact, seem to age with much more flexibilty than many people I know. But I think some of the physical realities are coming into play now.

I am a younger child, and my parents don't want me to be their caregiver, but I worry about them. Its just recently my dad doesn't understand that I do errands and chores in the evening and mental work and reading when I am more focused. And I think just being here just seems to get my mom in the mothering mode. Plus we share some of the same interests, but she won't let me contribute if we do go on a hiking trip or camping trip. And I try to be clear that I cannot afford to be going to everything that she wants to do, but that just seems to pour fuel on the fire. Also, I cannot cobble together winter temp work and have a super flexible schedule. I wish she would reach out a little more instead of treating me as a 'paid friend'. I know to some extent that I just need to be gracious about a gift like that, but the fact that that just seems to encourage her more bothers me. She is more outgoing than I am, but is always busy(but often by choice) and enjoys the convenience of my being there, so much that she signed me up without my knowing for a volunteer wolf tracking program with her, ect. If I try to have a clear conversation with her, it ends up as an arguement of the ilk that I don't have my finances completely totgether, because I am still paying off a medical bill (the 20% not covered by my insurance at the time), to the thing where she doesn't want me to struggle like she did (she left home at 17); I try to reassure her that many of the things I have been doing, though not ideal, are not near as bad as the edge she was walking, but the reality is that I want tio take risks with my career that just seem to worry her to no end.

[LuckySweetheart]

My mom lectures me about the dumbest things (like cutting onions right for example).

If I don't call my mom every Sunday evening she'll freak out and call me wondering why I haven't called her yet. Then she'll ask me what I had for dinner and complain that I don't work out enough. It really gets on my nerves.

[Ezra Pippen]

...at the senior center. And he actually likes it, and saw people he knew there:) . And spring is around the corner, so he will soon be back mowing grass at his beloved golf course soon (his retirement gig).