Weird question...

Forums: Relationships, Aging, Family, Parents, Aging Parents
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Is it weird when your parents get old? I mean, like, I can't imagine my dad being old and having to take care of him and stuff. Getting old and living a long time and stuff is amazing but do you ever look back and remember how your parents used to be before they got older?

It's kinda the same as trying to picture my dad as a kid. It's weird. Like, I know he was my age before and I know that one day he'll be an old dude (LOL) but I just can't picture it.

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@GracieGirl,

I could never picture my parents as children. And while growing up, I don't ever remember even giving that a thought.

But no, it's not a weird question to me. I recently went home last month to visit my parents. It's was a kick in the pants as my parents are of the age I remember my grandparents to be when I was living at home so long ago.

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@GracieGirl,

I dunno about weird. I think it's a generational thing - we sometimes kind of like to think, deep down, that the world didn't exist, and God knows our parents had no purpose, until we were born. But of course none of that is true.

Photographs help. My father is 80 and my mother will be 79 in January. But there are, of course, pictures of them as youngsters, plus their wedding photo, etc. Compare photos of my Mom and me at about age 10 or so and we look similar (although she was brunette then, and I am blonde). Compare my brother's first grade pic to my Dad's and, except for the girls' fashions in the group shots, you can practically interchange them. Look at their wedding photograph (December of 1955) and they are hopeful and fresh-faced. Look beyond the fashions from times like, when they attended my admission to the Bar, or my brother's wedding, or took my late great-aunt to Ellis Island back in the '80's, and you see not only the progress of the years, but also how people change, as things like mortgages and aging begin to burden them, or as retirement frees them.

There are movies from my mother's Sweet Sixteen (1949), and you see my mother blushing (this is in black and white, but I swear you can tell) because a fellow (this was her first party where she could invite young men over - it's a few years before she met my Dad) must have complimented her.

But some of these feelings, I imagine, are your own feelings of mortality, but also recognizing that they won't be around forever. You will see how you feel if one of them becomes seriously ill, or you see they are slowing down physically, or the like. 'Cause that happens, too, yanno, and it can be hard to watch.

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@GracieGirl,

Quote:

Is it weird when your parents get old? I mean, like, I can't imagine my dad being old and having to take care of him and stuff.

What you haven't worked out is that the "I" you are today will not be the "I" which may cope with ageing parents.

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@GracieGirl,

It's not weird, Gracele, because it happens gradually. And when your parents are older, you will be too. You don't see aging when you see people all the time.

My mother looked after my father. Then I looked after her. She didn't like it, and neither did I. But I did it, and she accepted it.

I have pictures of my parents from when they were young. So I know what they looked like. But I don't know how they acted. Hard to imagine.

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I don't want to sound a gloomy note, but not all parents live to be old. My mother died when she was 46 (coincidentally, that was 46 years ago). My father is still alive and is aged 92. So my mother is, if you like, forever frozen at 46.

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@GracieGirl,

I wish I had the chance to see my parents grow old and make sure they were taken care of in their old age but that will not happen.

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@GracieGirl,

What is weird, is looking back to a time when you thought your parents were old and then realizing they were, at that time, younger than you are now.

I really disliked the movie Field of Dreams with the exception of the scene where Kevin Costner has a catch with his father - who happens to be younger than him.

I don't know that I would like to now meet my father when he was in his 20's so much as having us both together in our 20's.

Maybe heaven.

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@GracieGirl,

I'll put it in a parent's perspective - I find it weird to think of my children as adults.

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@Linkat,

some parents never come to grips with it...

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@Rockhead,

yeah even when we are adults...so true.

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@GracieGirl,

As a young person I had trouble imagining my folks as anything BUT their present age they were. Over a period of time it (and seeing many photos of them as children) it became a lot easier but that didn't occur until I reached about age 21. Interestingly what I learned from my oldest sister was that my Dad at aged 18 tried to look and act older than he was. He swore his oldest sister to secrecy that he wasn't 21 for the sake of impressing the girls.

As for taking care of them when they got older, I never had the opportunity. My mom was terminally ill when I was a teenager and my older sister and aunt took care of her. However, if I were able to do it, I would have done it.

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My mother was one of a set of fraternal twins. There are several photographs of them when they were children, some newspapter clippings, as it was uncommon in the 1920s for twins to survive child birth, and "identical" twins were always a good human interest story.

But they weren't identical twins. When they got to be adults, they were very different in many striking ways--hair color, build, height . . .

But there was a photograph taken of them in a photographic portrait studio when they were a year old (1921). Anyone who knew them as adults was able to look at that picture and say--that one's Jean and that one's June. It was uncanny how much they were not alike at the age of one, and how much at the age of one they resembled the appearance they would have when they were both 3o.

So, no, i never had any problem either imagining them as children, nor understanding the aging and maturation process.

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@contrex,

contrex wrote:

I don't want to sound a gloomy note, but not all parents live to be old. My mother died when she was 46 (coincidentally, that was 46 years ago). My father is still alive and is aged 92. So my mother is, if you like, forever frozen at 46.

A have a friend whose daughters first husband died in a car crash when they had been married a little over a year. Very sad. I'm thinking they were both around 24 or so when this happened. This was maybe 9 or 10 years ago.

Now she's remarried, has 2 children, many events have come and gone.

A couple of years ago I said to my friend "Keiths forever 24. He would look at Robin and be amazed at the person she is today." Then we went on to talk about how she would be a different person if he was still alive, the children they would have had, what her now husbands life path would have been, etc.
She loved her husband, but he's forever her young husband.

contrex, did your father remarry?

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@jcboy,

I sympathize, jcboy. My father died when I was 26, and my mother got alzheimer's right after that, living another ten years that were mostly miserable for her. There are conversations we three never had. Re my father, I knew him well and can easily imagine our conversations now. I'm 69 (snort!) and he'd be 105. We could, if we could, talk endlessly.

My mother: I have many of her traits as well as my father's, but my behavior for good or ill is similar to my father's. Besides that, he also batted left handed and had a negligible sense of smell. My mother was a rule maker born in 1901, so you can imagine her rules from today's point of view. I struggled with her and she with me (father born in 1906, but no similar struggles). I came into "my own" in the sixties, a rather well known decade. Her death was much a relief from pain for both of us, hugely more for her. It wasn't for several years that I could see past my own mind and understand her better, though I always had the sorrow. I was just growing up when she was losing it.

I knew from photos and stories parts of their pasts, pretty interesting. I started a photo thread on a2k about it once, and flagged in my efforts.

Gracie, the big surprise in all this is how incredibly fast life speeds by. At 69, despite what Contrex says (and I see his point, re your viewpoints to come), I am the same person I was, and I am sometimes 4, sometimes 15, then 21 (21!), then 28, and so on. My age encompasses my past and many times I agree with myself back then or argue with me then, now, now being supposedly wiser.

Keep your eyes open and your wits about you, eh? Enjoy the richness, the textures of your life. That sounds corny but I mean it.

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@chai2,

chai2 wrote:

contrex, did your father remarry?

He married my beloved stepmother Pauline, 5 years later, 41 years ago. She passed away last year, so he was married to her twice as long as he was to my mother. He has buried two wives (or rather cremated them) both at the same place. Going to the same crematorium chapel was strange for both of us. Worse for him, I think. He said "I won't hang about long after this" but he has rallied since.

1 Reply

@contrex,

Funny how time passes, huh?

I am right now at the age my mother was when I left home for college. When I graduated, stayed there. I've moved around, but never back to my home state.

Talking about the place your mother and stepmother were cremated, I shared in another thread about my parents gravesite.
I couple of years ago I happened to be in that area, and for the life of me could not find the family burial plot in that cemetary.

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@GracieGirl,

My parents are both well (touch wood) and able to care for themselves but I have found it strange when they've been in hospital at different times and I've
been in a supporting, comforting role. It's just because it's a role reversal. Somehow caring for my parents made me feel like I was finally 'grown up' in a way that caring for my own children didn't.

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@jespah,

Quote:

we sometimes kind of like to think, deep down, that the world didn't exist, and God knows our parents had no purpose, until we were born. But of course none of that is true.

Oh! You're soo right! It kinda feels like my dads life started when mine started. It's hard to imagine him having a life before I was born. Haha! That kinda sounds like a bratty thing to say, but it's soo true.

Quote:

But some of these feelings, I imagine, are your own feelings of mortality, but also recognizing that they won't be around forever. You will see how you feel if one of them becomes seriously ill, or you see they are slowing down physically, or the like. 'Cause that happens, too, yanno, and it can be hard to watch.[\quote]

I don't really know exactly what you mean by 'my own feelings of mortality'. Yea, my dad can do anything now and he's strong and fun and plays around with me and stuff. I still can't imagine him needing my help when he's older or him being sick or slowing down. It just seems like it could never happen to him, ya know. Kinda a scary thought and super weird. Like, when I imagine me getting older and moving out and getting a job and having my own family I picture my dad staying the same. I never thought about him growing older too. Was that the same for you when you were younger?

Oh! And this might seem like a random question, that's why I called it 'weird question' Lol. But it's really not that random. Me and my dad were hanging out, talking and looking at pics in the family photo album that my grandparents brought with them. (they're visiting from Canada, FYI.) and there were pics of my grandpa as a kid and at 21 when he married my grandma and pics of when my dad was a baby ( he was super cute and looked alot like my brother) and a pic of when my dad was 13!! He wasn't soo cute then. Haha! And It was funny and really cool. Especially seeing the pics of my grandparents when they were young. I didn't even recognize them and it was weird seeing how they looked back then and how different they are now. Then I started thinking that my dads gonna be like that some day. And I'm almost grown. In a few years I'll be able to move out and do my own thing and follow my own rules and I won't need my dad. It's kinda exciting but a little scary too, honestly. I'm always saying that it's taking FOREVER for me to finally turn 18 and be a grown up but time goes by faster than I thought.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

What you haven't worked out is that the "I" you are today will not be the "I" which may cope with ageing parents.

I get that when Im older I'll be different but I'll still be me.

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Weird question...

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