Healthy relationships: With aging parents, changing relationships can still be healthy

I’ve been thinking a lot about a conversation I had with my 85-year-old father not long after my mother died. He was sharing with me a plan he’d made to travel and as he outlined his plans, which seemed to me to be somewhat unwise, I said to him, “We can talk more about this.” His response to me was simply, “There is no ‘we.’” In that short phrase, my father made it very clear to me that he was still an adult and still had the ability and the right to make his own decisions. I could either get on board or get out of the way.

That conversation has framed the ways in which I’ve interacted with my dad for the four years since. I’ve shared my thoughts and opinions with him – I’m the oldest and that’s what I do – but I’ve been careful to respect his ability to make decisions for himself as an adult. For example, I raised the issue of his driving, sharing my concerns and prompting him to think about things he might not have considered. But the decision wasn’t mine to make.

Now, however, we are navigating a new territory. My father had a small stroke that left him with some cognitive impairment and his decision-making isn’t what it used to be. He struggles to manage his medications, uncertain of what time it is, when he should be taking them, or if he already has. Some days, he’s fine and much like his old self. Other days not so much. So, my siblings and I have had to make uncomfortable decisions about invoking a power of attorney to keep track of things that are beyond his ability to manage. My parents were thoughtful and planned well for their aging, setting up the power of attorney and investing in long-term care insurance. While I’m clear that it is a privilege to have those things in place to manage, the management of them has its own challenges emotionally. It is, for example, difficult to tell a parent that you are taking their credit card away because they are charging things they can’t remember and sharing the number with those who can’t be trusted. The struggle to support a parent whose decision-making and reasoning ability is compromised without infantilizing them is a real one, at least for me.

I’ve heard it said that as parents age, eventually the parent becomes the child, but I’m not sure that should be the case. It seems to me that in a healthy parent-child relationship, even one between an impaired parent and an adult child, there should be ways to navigate important decisions without making the parent feel like the child. Finding ways to be respectful even as the responsibility for decision-making shifts from parent to child is critical. How we have those conversations, especially when we must have them repeatedly, is as important as the conversation itself. Trying to honor the authentic self and wishes of a parent when that parent can no longer be clear about what those are is a tangled process at best, but in keeping my focus on the relationship of caring and respect, I hope to find a way through. If I can do that, even as the relationship with my dad changes, it can still be a healthy one for both of us.