parenting your parents and kids at the same time: the eldercare sandwich

My father was almost ninety-one when my mother died. I was about fifty at the time, and my son was a little over two years old. My father, who had been a demanding and combative person his entire life, was now suddenly without the checks and balances provided by my mother's calming presence. He was an angry bull unleashed in a china shop – everybody was either a son-of-a-bitch or a no-good dirty bastard.  My mother, the buffer zone, was gone, I lived over 700 miles away, and my only brother lived in France.  Can you hear the sounds of crashing crystal?...

My father was almost deaf, so phone calls were always an ordeal.  Sometimes things were crazy and sometimes things were calm, but either way phone calls with my father were always loud, and sometimes anxiety-producing. Growing up in our small house, my son was an unfortunate witness to almost all of it. He heard it in the house, and saw it when we went to visit my father.  Exposing children to angry relatives like my father  probably constitutes some kind of child abuse, and though some of the crazy conversations and angry moments make for good comedy in the re-telling, they weren't funny at the time...

I was taking care of two people who were on opposite ends of the spectrum, each one more than forty years in age from me.  I was in a world between the very, very old and the very, very young, where my little son often exhibited great maturity while my aged father frequently acted like a baby...

Parenting the very young and the very old at the same time is interesting: while both need constant attention, the young child is (mainly) easily managed while the aging parent can often be very resistant. The adult child of the aging parent who still has at-home children often has life and death issues entering into their daily life.  Accidents, sickness, and encroaching infirmity are par for the course when caring for the aged parent, and in my house my son was far too aware of what was happening with my father and his regular emergencies. Elderly parents usually require increasing amounts of help, and even the youngest children can sense, if not plainly see, the difficulties that are involved.  Sometimes I think that my son, in some ways, grew up too fast...

I was an Oreo cookie in real life...

Visit my website at http://www.jamielegon.com to see an excerpt from my book FEET FIRST-Riding the Elder Care Rollercoaster with My Father, engage in my conversation on aging, or to contact me directly...