We have here, the middle generations caring for the older generations, and this will become a trend all over the world too, translated…
In the aging societies, there’s this new “trend” of aging children taking care of their elderly parents.
My neighbor, Huei is past midlife, but because she felt bad over how her ninety-year-old father couldn’t have the love and care and concerns from the nursing home he was placed in, she’d filed for early retirement, and took her father home to look after, since she’d carried the weight of looking after her aging father as a “grand gesture”, and would take the deed seriously. For this, she’d abandoned what she was so passionate about from before, being a gardening volunteer, and, her hiking buddies no longer saw her anymore either. Recently, I’d bumped into Huei, at the hospital, she accompanied her older sister to see the psychiatrists, because her elderly father died not too long ago, and Huei had lost the focus of her life, plus she’d always blamed herself to not taking good enough care of her aging father, the stresses compounded made her depressed.
Another neighbor, a woman older than me, Rong also took on looking after her centurion mother, and, in caring for her elderly mother day in and day out, she’d scheduled for the professional caretakers to look after her mother for a few hours a day, and during those few hours’ time, she’d taken up quilting, or headed to the hospitals to volunteer, and her aging mother also encouraged her to have a life of her own too. And so, even after Rong’s aging mother passed away, she still lives her life in fulfillment.
not my photograph…
I’m a blessed “old child”, I suppose, although I’d needed to take care of my own eighty-five year-old elderly mother too, but my mom could take care of the ins and outs of her own life, didn’t need a professional caretaker with her, and I could take the time to write, the read, or to take my strolls around the neighborhood. Normally, I’d had my mom handle tasks that aren’t dangerous, that trains her hand-eye coordination, like folding up the laundry, making the rice balls, and as I’d made the noodle item “Cat’s Ears”, I’d allowed her to help me out too. My friends would come by my place often for coffee too, and all told me how they wished that my mother could be out on “loan” to them, because of how sociable my mother is. Mom was more than pleased at how I’d kept my own hobbies and still connected with my friends, said that one day after she was gone, I wouldn’t be left lonely.
not my photo still…
The aging children caring for their elderly parents had become, an irreversible trend today, the caretakers are all under great emotional and physical strains, and there would be a necessity for a network of helping hands, otherwise, the primary caretaker would be the first to fall. And, only after you’d taken care of yourselves, physically and psychologically, can you give the proper care that your aging parents need.
And so, this, is how to age gracefully, and, socialization is one of the keys of success in this, keeping a hobby is another VITAL mean, so, all the caretakers should NOT focus wholeheartedly on the ones they’re looking after, when you have the spare times, take up some hobbies that can keep you occupied, like knitting, handicrafts, joining a singing troupe or something, this is why, hobbies are very important later on in one’s life.
not my photo here…
Life, the Obstacle Course 