Elder care, in the beginning
And so begins the story of taking care of my aging parents. Come along for the ride.
I’m a stranger, a stranger in front of the house I’m about to call home. It’s a temporary move, but it’s also an indefinite one. These are the scariest kinds of moves. They’re also the most fun.
I press the doorbell and hear the two-tone sound bounce around the halls as I anxiously wait for the sound of shuffling feet to approach.
I imagined their reactions when I pulled up to their house: Maybe they’d come running towards the door, but then I remembered that they can barely walk. Maybe someone would yell “It’s Daniel!,” but then I remembered that they only expend the energy to talk loudly when they’re upset. Or maybe they’d forget that I was coming back today, even though I called them a few hours ago to remind them. Because, you know, they’re old. Memory’s a bit of a premium.
But they’re my parents, and I love them. That’s why I’m moving back. I’ll take whatever reaction they give. And when I hear a pair of footsteps approach, the door lock twist with a snap, and the wooden door creak open, I stand there with my arms outstretched.
“Hi!” I announce.
It’s my mom, standing in the doorway. She’s on a step above me, and I’m still taller than her.
“Hi,” she mumbles, but with a smile. She stands there, her head bobbing up and down and right hand wavering back and forth—one of the many signs that something in her body is failing her.
For some reason I expected my return to my parents to be a little bit more of an event. I didn’t need, or even want, a party or anything like that. But after leaving home fourteen years ago, their son is back. I guess I wanted a reaction with a more fanfare attached to it.
Instead my arms fall to my side and I drop my backpack to the ground, and that's the end of it.
“Is that your car?” she looks at the silver vehicle against the curb.
"Yeah. You were with me when I bought it, remember?” I don’t know why I ask. I already know she doesn’t.
My mom continues to stand there as I start unloading boxes from my car.
“Can I help you move things?” she asks in Chinese.
“No, I’m fine. The stuff is really heavy,” I also respond in Chinese. I know it’s easier for her to understand.
I lug in one of my bigger boxes and set it down in our hallway, which is lined with cases of water bottles, a DVD player, and a microwave that I once bought and wanted to return but my mom saw how good of a deal it was so she asked to keep it. It still hasn’t been removed from its box.
I take a peek around the wall into the living room and see my dad, exactly where I expected to see him: on the couch, in his meditative pose of sitting and staring into nothing.
“Hi, Dad!” I say above my normal voice, so he can hear me.
“Hello, Daniel,” my dad’s face brightens. He tries to stand up, but can’t, and rocks back and forth a few times to build some momentum before finally rising to his feet. “Do you need help?”
“Nope. Everything’s really heavy.”
My mom jumps in again. “Are you sure? Let us help you move your things.”
I change tactics. “You’ll be helping me the most if you let me do it alone. I’ll go faster, and then I’ll know where everything is.”
My mom makes some sound of acknowledgement.
Eventually everything that was in my car, is inside my new home. My parents’ house was never clean since they moved in, but adding on my stuff, it looks like they’re not even trying. I survey the mess—which sort of reminds me of my own life right now—and I decide, I’ll just get some clothes and my toothbrush out and call it a day.
My brother swings by with his kids and with Chinese take out. He’s brought too much, which is a strategic move so that my parents will have leftovers for the next day or two.
“You should take it home,” my mom says as soon as we’re done, right on cue.
“No, the kids won’t really eat it,” my brother responds.
“No…” my mom’s voice drifts off. “We don’t have space in the refrigerator.” I don’t think she’s lying, but this is obviously false. There’s at least one entirely empty shelf in the fridge.
But I know better than to argue the facts with her. “I want it,” I jump in. I don’t, actually, but I know that if I say that I do, my mom will agree to keep it.
I flash my brother a grin. Years later, we’re still two siblings plotting against our parents. Which is, what we start talking about: how I’m going to stay in this house with them for a few months; how I’ll take them to doctor’s appointments and get a sense of what their health situation really looks like; how I’ll drive them around to buy groceries, eat lunch, go to social events, everything so I understand their habits, and also how to change them. Because that’s what they need right now—a gentle push into a less independent, new stage of life. And one of the only people they’ll take that push from, is me.
And even that, is still not much more than a hope.
After my brother and his family leaves, I change my mind about unpacking and decide to organize my room and create a workspace in the unused room next door. I start laughing at the thought of a young man moving back in with his parents and invading their space again just so he doesn’t have to pay rent.
I realize I’m not that young man. I don’t want to be here, and don’t have to be, but I also do.
It doesn’t really feel like I’ve moved. I came back to visit a lot over the past few years. I’d come for a few days before going back to my life in Seattle. But eventually that wasn’t sustainable for my parents, despite their objections to the contrary, and I made the call to say goodbye to Seattle and to come here. Back home. It’s not the house I grew up in, but home, nevertheless.
Home is such a loaded word, such a loaded place. You never really know what it’s like to come back to it until you do, and then sometimes you wonder if Home packed its bags and wandered off to some other place for you to discover instead. It feels like a past that I’ve come back to confront, like coming face to face with a former version of myself, and challenging him to prove that he’s grown and changed—for the better.
And few places is this clearer than when my mom asks me to wake her up the next day and take her to church.
When I do wake her up, I remind her that I’m happy to take her, and a church friend a few blocks down. But I’m not going to actually go myself.
“How come?” she asks.
I shuffle through a rolodex of excuses, and decide it’s not really worth explaining—again—the minute details of my ever evolving questions and beliefs.
“I don’t really enjoy it,” I answer instead.
“How come?”
I frown, and give her an equally habitual response. “I just don’t.”
Any car ride with my parents these days is always quiet, but this quiet feels uncomfortable and I can’t tell if it’s just me battling myself over whether we should discuss this more, or if my mom is actively holding some tension with me. There’s no real way to explain to her why I don’t want to go that is both honest but also respectful of what her mind is capable of processing. All logic and rationale here is ultimately passed in favor of emotional and habitual responses, and not even really beliefs. The time for reason has passed and her brain is literally incapable of it.
“Please,” she says one more time.
“Nope.”
I think I’ve won. I’ve won before. But I figure this isn’t going to be a problem.
But then she reaches into some deep part of her, I don’t know where, habits, emotions, history, and she pulls out a deadly phrase she’s used on me as a kid, one that I think many parents use. Or romantic partners. Maybe it’s worth it. I don’t know. I’ve never used it. I hope never have to.
But she does. She goes nuclear, in a way I forgot she could.
“If you love me.”
I instinctively laugh. Some combination of disbelief, indignation and genuine laughter that she’d still go for this.
“Nope. Nope. Nice try. That’s not going to work,” I say.
But...it kind of does work.
We sit in silence, which means I’m the one who’s dwelling on it. Maybe she is, I don’t really know. And then eventually I turn into the church parking lot and into a parking space.
My brain is making all the random calculations of what to do, one of which is: Did I make a mistake? It hasn’t even been a full twenty-four hours and I’m already wondering if I shouldn’t have moved back.
“Do you know why I came back?” I flip the ignition off and turn to face her.
The only sound she makes is this low hum that seems uncontrollable and sporadic. It’s like she’s talking to herself, but she’s not. And she can’t stop doing it.
“Hm?” I grunt.
"Because you love us.”
Like anyone who’s annoyed, that’s the answer I’m looking for and yet it’s entirely unsatisfactory. I couldn’t have made this move at any other time in my life because I knew it’d feel like a duty. That they needed my help but that they would need to tell me they appreciated it. That they’d need to know the depths of the life I gave up to be here, even if I wanted to be here.
But this time, I think, I hope, I even sometimes literally pray, that I’m different now. That the very reason I can come back is because for once in my life, I actually love them, and can accept them for their oldness, their slowness, their inability to comprehend, even their inability to understand me. That I can accept the fact that more than anything, even when they refuse to stubbornly admit it, they need my help.
And so while my emotions tear at me, something in me subsides. Maybe it’s kindness. Maybe goodwill. But I think it’s actually the little kid in me, scared that his mother is going to be disappointed if he doesn’t go to church and can’t live with that.
And so, Mom, you win today. But hopefully, just, today.
“Fine.” the word forces itself out of my mouth with a punch of air. “But I’m only coming today and you can’t expect me to come any other week.”
“Uh huh,” my mom acknowledges, in the most neutral tone imaginable.
I step out of the car, close the door as gently as possible because I really want to slam it. And I watch my reflection in the car window cuss at me under my own breath, which may not be the most church-like thing to do, but to hell with it.
I haven’t even been home for twenty-four hours.
This is going to be a long, long, long ride.