The True Cost
I wish someone had told me the true cost of taking care of my parents. That it would be a cost greater than the sum of its parts. That to survive and then emerge from it would itself be one of the great costs to bear. That I might have to bear the cost for the rest of my life.
So I wish for it. I wish someone had told me the true cost of coming home to take care of my parents.
I wish someone had told me the true cost of taking care of my parents.
I look at my friends and peers who are now vice presidents and partners and principals. Who now own houses and attend fun parties and experience extravagant vacations. Who open restaurants and produce books and stake claims to any amount of fame.
Meanwhile the corporate world views more or less the same as when I left and I don’t really have anything else to show for my time away. I have no book, no musical stage, no lavish display of success.
Wisdom tells me that looking up is a waste of time. Wisdom tells me looking down can be a way to be grateful for what I have, to remember those who have less. Wisdom tells me to stop looking entirely.
But it is hard not to—social media may be an edited reality but edited reality can still be beautiful and hard not to look at.
And I would be lying if I didn’t admit, that some part of me is envious of what they have, of what I might have had.
I wish someone had told me the true cost of taking care of my parents.
That years later, and with the pandemic years providing no help, my friends would all move on without me. The places I used to call home in one way or another—Seattle, Walnut Creek, New York—they all would become unfamiliar. That at nearing the age of forty, the world would feel like it moved on without me.
It’s hard to fault them. I moved myself.
We, each of us, in our own ways, we’ve become new iterations of ourselves.
And the only literal and metaphorical friends who have stuck around, are those who have embraced this new version of me, and me this new version of them.
I wish someone had told me the true cost of taking care of my parents. That caregiving is financially expensive and that the dollar cost of it can be huge and that it only gets more huge and that if taking care of somebody is something you value, you had better be prepared to pay up.
I wish someone had told me the true cost of taking care of my parents.
That it would be lonely, that one of deepest pains of it would be just how lonely it still feels. That I would be lonely because it seemed like nobody understood. That I would be lonely because the few people who did understand, also knew that lonely is how it’s supposed to be. That I would be lonely because for my parents, the best possible outcome would be to lose them, before they lost their memory of me.
I often think to my parents’ community. My mother’s churches, the many she attended, the groups she served.
I wonder who remembers her.
I often think to my dad’s family, the many siblings, the many cousins and relatives, the many residents of bygone Manhattan Chinatown.
I wonder who remembers my dad. Who is still alive, to remember my dad.
I often wonder who remembers me. Who remembers what it was like, to take care of my parents. They certainly don’t, not even while they were here. I often wonder if I even do.
It feels lonely. More lonely.
And so I wish someone had told me the true cost of coming home to take care of my parents.
But on the other hand, maybe I don’t.
Because I have seen with my own eyes, that with old age also comes loneliness. Comes forgetting. Comes being forgotten.
And at the very least, that even if my parents felt loneliness in their old age, they were not alone. I was there. My brother’s family was still there.
When it was just my dad, left to live on, we were all still there.
My parents, they were both, in their own ways, not forgotten. And they still are not.
I wish someone had told me the true cost of coming home to take care of my parents.
That with it comes a lifetime of regret, what-ifs, and second guessing, even after my parents have long gone.
There are days when, like my parents, I wish I could forget any of it ever happened. There are days I feel I am getting lost going down memory lane. There are days when out of nowhere, I will remember how awful some of their last days might have been.
If I could have somehow, just given them something a little bit better.
I wish someone had told me the true cost of taking care of my parents because it is an experience that has unleashed so much latent predisposition for depression and anxiety and it is often unbearable.
But on the other hand, maybe I don’t. Because it has also forced me to learn the art of transformation and reinterpretation.
That when I think of my mom, I can think of her crying, and I can think of her once again changing her mind at dim sum.
That when I think of my dad, I can think of him lonely, and I can think of him comfortable, quietly watching his local community of like-minded elderly, as he often did anyway.
That when I miss my parents, I am allowed to miss them, and I am allowed to continue living.
That emotions are a language lost in translation.
That it is okay to feel that I could have done better, and that I did more than the best I could, both at the same time.
I wish someone had told me the true cost of coming home to take care of my parents.
That it would drain me of all my desire to take care of anything and anyone, including myself, sending me into an emotional oxymoron where I refused to consider pets or children and at the same time attached myself to any and all instances where I could take care of someone at the expense of myself.
The dying plants in my wake are a testament to my spiral.
And as I watch their leaves grow limp and brown and fall, I wish someone had told me the true cost of taking care of my parents, because some days I also feel like one of my own plants, unable to take care of myself.
But on the other hand, maybe I don’t. Because by coming home, I stumbled upon the two cutest boys, who daily remind me of my childlike zeal and stupidity which is precisely the point of childhood anyway. They remind me to look forward, to see a future where life is still to be experienced and the world is still to be explored and that there are new stories for them to live which also means there are new stories for me.
That I can be the almost forty-year-old who took care of his parents, and also the child full of the attitude they remind me so much of.
That from my consistent time with them has sprouted a connection—a love of being their uncle and them being my nephews. A love far beyond any capacity with which I knew I had, and I parade them around to anyone who will watch because I am constantly finding new depths from which to draw more love for them and damn if I am afraid of how strange it is for me to think such a thing.
A love that powers my care for them, which I now understand, is the same love that powered my care for my parents.
A love for the small moments. The unplanned moments.
The loop around the park I walked with my mom. The loop around the park I walk with my nephews.
Sharing photos of discovering my dad’s New York home with my dad. Sharing photos of my New York adventures with my nephews.
The choice to be here. The choice to still be here.
I wish someone had told me the true cost of taking care of my parents.
But on the other hand, maybe I don’t. Because if I did, I don’t honestly know that I would have done it.
And that is a wish, I cannot to make.