Parenting Our Parents
Roles
When aging causes parents to act like children, children must act as parents. Are we ready for the reversal?
"Dad, I've had it. Quit bugging me. I mean it, now!" My wife's voice exploded just below the level of a scream from the downstairs family room. A second later, she appeared at the top of the stairs in a flood of tears.
"I can't believe it," she said, choking, then continued, "I've never talked to my father like that."
The explosion had been building for several days. Her father and mother were visiting us in Seattle for the last time. Dad Voorheis was eighty-seven years old and Mom Voorheis was eighty-three. Each showed evidence of old age: Dad had a disfiguring nervous disease, and Mom showed the first signs of senility. When Dad declared, "This will be our last visit," our intuition told us that he spoke the hard truth.
Due to my stupidity, the trip started off as a disaster. I had driven the seventy-mile run from Spring Arbor, Michigan, to the Detroit airport a hundred times during my years as president of Spring Arbor College. Precise timing required an hour and fifteen minutes for the
Page 58
drive, twenty minutes to turn in the rental car, and ten minutes to the gate, in order to arrive in time for the boarding call. When I traveled alone, I allowed for no margin of error. Occasionally, I hit the gate as the door closed — but I never missed a flight.
Two unforeseen events upset my timing. First, the state of Michigan had just enacted a law that reduced the speed limit on the interstate from seventy to fifty-five miles an hour. Second, I hadn't counted on the extra minutes to check Mom's and Dad's bags, get them to the Red Carpet Room of United Airlines to wait for me, turn in the car, return by bus, pick them up, and walk them slowly to the airplane. Needless to say, I missed the flight.
Three hours of waiting faced us. Dad and Mom had already expressed their anxiety about the flight, and now, thanks to me, they couldn't even trust their son-in law. Amidst all my self-flagellation, Dad and Mom gave me a moment to remember. After two hours of mock confidence in which I told them several times, "Don't worry, the name of the game in air travel is 'hurry up and wait,' " I walked them to the gate an hour ahead of the flight time. A convenient bench behind the agents' counter became our roost for an hour. Of course I got antsy and had to make a telephone call.
"Sit right here," I instructed them, "I'll call home, and come right back."
When I returned, Mom and Dad sat like models for a Norman Rockwell painting. Imagine this beautiful white-haired couple in their mid to late eighties, holding hands for me to see, and grinning from ear to ear like children who just skipped school without getting caught. To break the tension, they pulled the prank that they had been planning for the trip. When they held up their clasped hands, I saw the sparkle of a diamond and a wedding band.
My face showed the shock they wanted to see. Old-time Free Methodists, especially pastors, never wore wedding bands, to say nothing about diamonds. Dad had done his share of preaching against "gold, pearl, and costly array." In her tasteful but plain dress, Mom could never be accused of "superfluous adornment." Yet there they
Page 59
sat, flaunting the diamond and giggling like kids. Dad's good humor spoke the punchline. "We were worried that someone would see us traveling together and think that we're not married."
Mom held the ring up for my inspection. I could only ask, "Where in the world did you get it?"
"Out of the box on the dresser," Mom answered matter-of-factly. "Thirty years ago, when Mary Cummings was converted under Dad's preaching, she took it off and left it on the altar. It's been in the box ever since." Through humor, Dad and Mom revealed their return in fantasy to younger days with their unfulfilled wishes.
Soon after Janet's parents arrived in Seattle from that trip, we encountered the downside of their return to younger days. In the first hints of Mom's oncoming senility, she forgot facts recited minutes earlier in a conversation, but remembered details in her childhood with frightening lucidity. Dad took another turn. Ten years earlier, he had shown some signs of senility — primarily forgetfulness. The doctor discovered some "sludge" in the carotid artery feeding blood to the brain. With what the doctor called a "roto-rooter" he performed surgery, which set the blood flowing freely again. We could not believe the difference in Dad. Mentally, he became as sharp as he had been in his fifties. All traces of memory loss disappeared, and he returned to the preaching for which he was known — quoting Scripture, hymns, and poems at length.
Medical science deserves rave notices for its works of wonder. But we sometimes forget that the human body is so finely tuned that positive change in one part can trigger a negative change in another part. How else can we account for the fact that Dad Voorheis became a young mind in an aging body? As the body aged and weakened, his mind rebelled against the facts, and he began to resent his aging. True to his personality, however, he directed his resentment toward others with a "nervous Nellie" demand on details. Mom Voorheis, of course, became his first victim. His demands upon her were impossible, and she, true to her personality, retreated within herself, rather than rebel. Independently, my wife and I came to the conclusion that the onset
Page 60
and advancement of Mom's senility correlated directly with Dad's surgery and his subsequent demands. As we often said, "If we could put his mind and her body together, we would have one young parent."
Once in Seattle, Dad's obsession with details affected our entire family. The airline tickets became his case in point. From the moment he arrived, he demanded that my wife get the return flight confirmed, even though the time was two weeks away. Janet said, "I'll do it, but there's no hurry. Twenty-four hours in advance is plenty of time." Still, Dad did not let up. Each day began with the question, "Did you get our tickets fixed?" Persistence became an obsession. Finally, a full week before the flight, my wife could take no more. She exploded, "Dad, I've had it. Stop bugging me. I mean it, now!" The reversal of roles almost unbalanced my wife. A life of obedience to her father had been broken. As she told me later, "It was almost more than I could take. Our roles were reversed. I was the parent and he was the child. I never spoke to my father that way."
Masters of Manipulation
Sons and daughters of aging parents must be ready for the reversal of roles. There is no way to escape the shock of change. After a lifetime of listening to the instructions of parents, it is unnatural to give commands with the voice of authority. Yet there is no alternative. Older people are masters of manipulation. They have a full quiver of arrows to shoot and get their way. Guilt is their favorite weapon. One day my wife took her mother out of the nursing home and away from her father for an afternoon of the kind of leisurely shopping that had bound them together for so many years. When they returned, Dad Voorheis complained, "Because you were gone, the nurse wouldn't give me any dinner." In disbelief, my wife went to the nurses' station to ask if Dad had dinner. Of course he did. His complaint of neglect was nothing more than a manipulative tactic to make his wife and daughter feel guilty for going shopping.
Page 61
Before condemning our aging parents for using many childish tactics to manipulate us and get their way, we must remember that their repertoire of influence has been severely reduced. At the same time, they usually know what they are doing. Delbert McHenry, psychology professor at Seattle Pacific University, opened a new world of understanding elderly people in his studies at a nursing home.1 A resident incessantly called, "I want my mama," until an attendant became exasperated. "Stop it," the attendant countered, "Your mother has been dead for twenty years."
Shock covered the woman's face. Dropping her head, she confessed, "I know it. I was just trying to get your attention." Her confession so piqued Dr. McHenry's research mind that he did an intensive study on the behavioral effects of aged persons being relocated in nursing homes. He found that the expectations new residents brought to the nursing homes directly affected the relocation stress they experienced. Negative expectations were created when the new residents felt as if the move to the nursing home meant a loss of independence or inability to control one's environment, rejection by children, or prelude to death. The often-used tactic getting Mom or Dad to "try out" the nursing home as an experiment also worked against a positive adjustment to relocation. As might be expected, the best adjustments were made by aged persons who were still relatively healthy, mentally active, and free from neurotic defenses against stress. Neurotic coping mechanisms that the aged persons used to deal with stress prior to admission became especially pronounced in reaction against the new environment. Resorting to defensive or manipulative tactics, they withdrew from mental activity, such as reading, writing, and hobbies, isolated themselves from other people, neglected grooming, and stopped eating or picked at their food. Not surprisingly, they lost memory, became confused, and often suffered premature death.
Not all of the adjustment to relocation rested upon the expectations of the elderly person. The environment of the nursing home itself tended to reinforce the new resident's expectations. On another
Page 62
occasion, Dr. McHenry met a new resident who likened the nursing home to a prison. When asked why he felt this way, the man answered, "They won't let you come or go when you want to." A few weeks later, Dr. McHenry was visiting the nursing home again when word spread that the man had disappeared. A search of the buildings started when Dr. McHenry remembered their conversation and suggested that they alert the police for a search of the neighborhood. Within minutes the police found the man walking on a street several blocks from the nursing home. When the man came back through the door with a police escort, he spotted McHenry and gave him a knowing look. "See, I told you it was like a prison. When you go for a walk they send the police after you!"
McHenry's recommendations from the study should be implemented by cooperative agreement of aging parents who can participate in the decision for relocation, their adult children or family, and the staff of the nursing home itself:
Page 63
While we must be aware of the coping mechanism used by our aging parents and avoid being intimidated by them, we cannot lose compassion for their plight.
Dad Voorheis used on me the same technique of badgering that had driven his daughter to a violent outburst. During a visit to their home in Spring Arbor a few months before we were forced to move them to the apartment, Dad said that he had to get the garbage can out on the curb for the weekly pickup. "I'll do it, Dad," I volunteered. My wife interrupted to say that it was too early to put the garbage out. The day was Tuesday — the pickup was Friday.
On Wednesday morning, Dad responded to my "Good morning," with an oblique reference to the garbage can. I ignored him. So on Wednesday evening he spoke with urgency, "We've got to get the garbage out now." Disgusted now, I snapped back, "Look Dad, I said I'd get the garbage can out in time, and I will. Relax." Still my wife recommended that I get the can on the curb the first thing on Thursday morning. I did my job, but did it wrong. After I put the can on the curb, Dad went out and shifted it over to the "right spot" for the pickup. When he came back into the house, I jumped at him — "Dad, you created a crisis with that garbage can and upset the whole household. Why?"
Momentarily returning to the pastoral tone that he had used to calm so many distraught parishioners, Dad answered, "Son, someday you'll understand. When you get old, even the little things are big." From then on, I tried to see the world through his eyes before reacting. When the manipulation was obvious, I had to be firm. When the tactic was desperate, I had to be fair. And in either case, I had to try to understand. What appear to us as games that our aging parents play may well be the only way they can cope with the passing of life, over which they have little control.
Chapter Eight || Table of Contents
