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PATIENCE, PLANNING AND SUPPORT: REFLECTIONS ON DEALING WITH AGING FAMILY MEMBERS
I was somewhat oblivious to the challenges of raising a young family in my youth, but I did take note that we were seemingly always on the move. I suspect I contributed modestly to this experience. Though I have no recollection of it, my older brother recalls that at about the “terrible twos” stage very early in my life, when I escaped for a
short time from our rented suite into the corridors of their Edmonton high-rise apartment building. A few more such episodes prompted a move to a rental home much closer to the ground as my mom resolved that she would no longer be chasing me up and down the corridors.5
This began a life of moves, first within Edmonton and
then during my dad’s civil service career, to Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island, in Nunavut Territory 6, and then down “south” again to the prairies and Canadian shield country, which makes up the Province of Manitoba. There, we
had stints in Winnipeg, Dauphin, and Brandon before settling back in Winnipeg. During much of the time in Manitoba (from 1973 to 1980), I attended boarding school in Winnipeg, which gave me some stability. Mom had attended such a school to keep her from under her dad’s feet when her mom was ill, so it was not as strange for her as it might be nowadays. I shared my mom’s restlessness. Upon graduating from high school, I struck out for the east coast to study for undergraduate and graduate degrees in Halifax, Nova Scotia, before moving to Kingston, Ontario, for law school and Toronto to start my legal career.
For their part, once retired, my parents moved in the opposite direction to the small town of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. They did so to meet my mom’s desire to retire to a more temperate climate like her home in the north of England and, in part, to be with and assist my older brother in raising their granddaughter. Ironically, Nanaimo is a former coal-mining town like the place where my mom grew up. Once they moved to the west
coast, visits to my parents were fewer and farther between than had been the case when I was in undergrad and graduate school. The demands of a legal career combined with distance and cost of travel meant trips west were cherished, planned well in advance, and always with less time to visit than was needed or desired.
Pausing here, readers may wonder why sharing such early life details is of any moment for a piece addressing the care of elderly parents and relatives. My purpose and message are simple:
n To fairly inform what you do requires recognizing why, and of course, your immediate answer is “because I care.”
n But to know how deeply you care about and for your aging loved ones, you are best served to take a bit of time to recall the memory of when they cared most deeply about and for you.
n This is to recognize that even in the angry moments, the not-so-pleasant encounters, the “I wish you had never been born” diatribes every self-respecting parent (or aunt or uncle) has thought in vivid detail not said out loud, there is underlying and unconditional love.
The impish grin hopefully leavens all of these challenging moments remembered, giggles, and laughter, which remind us why we parent (or are the patient aunt or uncle) and what we once were when we were, in turn, parented (or in the case of uncles and aunts, loosely supervised) by those we are now so challenged to care for...
But I digress... moving to the more recent past, the first inkling of anything amiss was shortly after I made it to the arrivals area at the Toronto airport to meet my parents on a rare visit east. They were flying in for a visit to spend time doting on their two granddaughters, then only in grade
5 Her athleticism was still challenged after our move as I do recall her chasing me around the kitchen of the rental house, wooden spoon in hand, because I’d managed to get my hands on the brown sugar jar left within reach. Ultimately, my boundless energy won over her fierce determination to mete out justice – perhaps helped by my constant laughter, which eventually brought a smile to my mom’s formerly angry face. All of which is to say, though rambunctious, mischievous, and quick on my feet at an early age, I was well and truly loved.
6 For readers old enough to recall the first voyage through the Northwest Passage of a ship called the USS Manhattan, my parents knew this was an historic “moment” and so hustled me along with my Inuit friends to the shores of Frobisher Bay at a low tide to bare witness – albeit from quite a distance – to a long black line moving slowly across the mouth of the bay, preceded by a much smaller red line with a white top. The former was the Manhattan, the latter one of our sturdy Canadian icebreakers cutting a path forward.
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