Making Better Choices with an Aging Parent

David’s expertise with aging parents helped me recognize what was important to my mom in her later years. About 18 months before she died, I made a conscious choice to put my personal issues with mom aside.  My game plan was I would accept her the way she was and try to see the world with her eyes rather than mine.  I asked more questions out of curiosity about choices she had made, her life history and how she was really doing.  Instead of attempting to talk her into something, I gave her choices and let her know whatever she decided I would support 100%.   I supported all her choices and let her know she could change her mind and I would support that change too.  I dropped my agenda and helped her get what she wanted done.  I found that we got along better and best of all I learned some things about mom I didn’t know.

Adopting a nonjudging attitude resulted in us spending more time together.  When I was at the ranch in Colorado, occasionally she would agree to leave Denver to visit us in the mountains.  I would make sure she had what she needed at our mountain home, comfortable slippers, plenty of daily newspapers, coffee, favorite foods and opportunities to socialize with neighbors and friends.  She loved getting into the open Ranger and driving across the ranch with me, through the creek and hay meadows, stopping to open and close gates, and up into the hills where another group of neighbors lived.

Months went by as I was back in California running my business and raising our daughters.  She called frequently by phone to tell me, “Nothing was new.” but always she had stuff to talk about.  Observations from the news and the newspaper, news about the community recreation center where she played cards and exercised, or progress reports on the backyard garden that my stepdad grew every year where subject to long discussions.  Once in a while she had an instruction for me about her CDs and investments or a question about a health concern.  She did complain she was more tired but was looking forward to our youngest daughter, Gretta graduating from high school next summer.   She hoped she could continue on into her 90s and asked me, What did I think? “ I said, “Mom you are doing great and you have no major health problems.  It’s possible.”

One morning mom called me.  She called at a time I was normally out for a morning run but for some reason that day I was home.  We talked about many things for about an hour and half.   She was very talkative and wanted to talk about some of her life choices she had made that I knew nothing about.  She talked about her past disappointments with my dad, a bad land investment that had been a family secret until that conversation, her gratitude that she quit smoking 30 years earlier, and her pride in her granddaughters.   It was a good conversation and I was surprised to hear about parts of her life that until then had been a mystery to me.  I realized my changed attitude had really opened up my relationship with mom.  Although I had never told my mom I loved her in a clear voice, that day I hung up with a softly spoken “love you mom”.

Two hours later my stepdad called to let me know he had found mom unconscious at home.  He thought she had fallen and hit her head.  The parameds had taken her to a trauma one hospital in downtown Denver.  The next few hours were heartbreaking and extremely distressful as I was in Los Angeles and she was two hours away by plane.  I knew from his description that something was terribly wrong.  Eventually, I tracked down which the Denver ER she was in.  The situation was grave.  Her blood pressure was barely measurable and she was unresponsive.  The ER doctors diagnosed that her heart was the problem and not her head injury.   They rushed her into emergency cardiac surgery only to find a large ruptured thoracic aneurysm.  It was too late to fix and most likely even if they had found it sooner, she would not have survived the surgery.

Mom was gone in a matter of hours.  I look back on our last year, last visits and our last phone conversation.  I am so thankful; I changed my communication style to meet her needs.  I used the attitudes of mindfulness and David’s insights into geriatric development to have a better relationship.  I thought she would live longer, but that last year was a good year.  I helped her preserve as much control as possible and we talked as much as she wanted about her life and legacy.  Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her.  I miss her every day.

I would like to hear from others who are contemplating better communication approaches with their aging parents.

As a sidenote, stories from the past that are repeated over and over by an aging parent are often an opportunity to go vertical in a conversation and learn new details that explain a part of your parent’s history. Often expressing genuine curiosity in a conversation is the first step. For some aging parents, while their short term memory may be failing, often there is great clarity regarding events in the past.