Elder Care: Making it through the Holidays

I've been thinking about the holiday season and why it is that this is a difficult time for those whose parents are old, frail and, possibly, living far away. What's really going on with this? I've thought through all the standard reasons given and come up with my own synthesis of what happens during this time of year.

If you're like me, this time of year calls up years of family celebrations while you were growing up. We weren't a large family, just my sister and I, with family relatives all living overseas. But my parents celebrated each holiday with gusto.

At Thanksgiving there were always friends invited over and a gorgeous table set by my mother, who had inimitable taste. I recall the annual Thanksgiving mornings spent on my favorite assigned chores: polishing the silver and shining the Red Delicious apples, then creating my own version of a striking centerpiece made of seasonal fruits. And the flurry of activity as friends arrived and were settled in their guest rooms for the overnight visit. At Christmas, the same flare was brought to the observances. First picking out a suitable tree, just the right height and triangular shape, always a sprucy-sort that was dense with branches. Then, the emergence of boxes of fabulous tree decorations, the ornaments nestled in crinkly tissue paper. For us, Christmas Eve dinner was always special, and the excitement of not knowing when Santa would come down the chimney was nearly unbearable.

These rituals of celebration which we followed every year are indelibly etched in my mind. Even so, when it comes to Thanksgiving or Christmas I don't really long for those bygone days. But every one of my senses does remember them in detail. If my own memories of those times are so rich, how much more so must they be for my mother, who now lives in a wonderful assisted living residence, but is nevertheless alone there and without close friends or family?

This time of year, unlike any other, drives home the difference between what was then and what is now. At other times of year, I am able to mask the reality of my elderly mother's present life. But Thanksgiving and Christmas, which are all bound up in tradition and family, make it abundantly clear how reduced her world has become.

This saddens me, but it doesn't drive me into a frenzy of compensating for what isn't. I find it's more helpful simply to recognize how I feel about things, and why I feel the way I do, and remain philosophical about it. I make a specific choice to dwell on what's going well and appreciate the existence of those things. It's true my mother doesn't have the family gatherings around her such as she used to create with such verve and style. That is sad. Yet it's also true that she is surrounded by kind and engaging people, her health is watched over by competent and sympathetic nurses, she has her own lovely small apartment, and she's able to go out to her favorite spot by the ocean most days of the week. These are things I'm really grateful for.