Que sera, sera/What will be, will be
Recently my father-in-law spent a few days in the hospital. For some intestinal issues. Thankfully the hospital stay was uneventful, the medical staff was wonderful and he returned home in five days.
That’s when we realized how much care he now needed. He is apprehensive to do all the things he was doing before he went into the hospital. He seems to have lost the will to make the effort to move during the day.
Before going to the hospital, I was helping him only with the occasional wearing of the socks or a jacket.
Now he feels reluctant to bend down to do anything, says he loses his breath. He asked me to dispense his daily medications because he can’t trust himself to keep track of them. He used to cut up his fruit for breakfast, now I have to serve him the cut up fruit. He needs help pushing off the couch to start walking with his walker. He doesn’t want me to leave the house if he’s napping in bed because he feels he won’t be able to get up himself. He wants me to write his texts for him. He feels depressed because he feels the extended family has forgotten him.
Adding to the frustration is that he’s hard of hearing but finds the hearing aids uncomfortable, so there is a lot of shouting required to get our point across to him.
I keep assuring him that all this is temporary, he spent five days in a hospital bed and it’s a well know fact that each week spent on bedrest leads to a 30-40 percent reduction in muscle strength, that his recovery will be slow but he will get better and be independent. The key is to keep moving and trying.
He has been evaluated for physical and occupational therapy and I am hopeful that once he goes through those he will again become independent with his activities of daily living.
More than the physical aspect which affected both him and me in the shape of needing more help, it was the mental aspect which was more debilitating.
On his side, he’s frustrated by his inability to do his day to day motions and that he’s now dependent on a person to help him for simple things like picking up the remote which has fallen to the ground.
On my side, I had a couple of days of sheer panic. How will I manage everything. Caregiving is Ok as long as you are just picking up the medications from the pharmacy or taking them to doctor’s appointments. But helping a person getting in and out of bed, shower, dress, toilet is a whole different ballgame. Add to that various small and big medical issues.
How would I go to work, even if it is two days a week, and make sure he is safe in the house? I am planning to retire soon, but even then, the constant supervision and monitoring of safety, medications, diet and recreational activities?
With that thought came the next one, what if this happens to me? I would hate, hate to be dependent on anyone, my daughters, or if I am in a nursing home, the staff there. How can I prevent this from happening to me? How can I remain healthy till my last day on earth and quietly move on in the middle of the night?
After a lot of tossing and turning in bed and spending a few sleepless nights, I came to the conclusion that really, I don’t know how the future will play out. The only thing I have in my hand is the now. I can do everything right in terms of diet and exercise and then hope for the best. The future is not mine to see, Que sera, sera.
So how am I going to prepare for this phase of life?
The first thing is the attitude. Old age comes upon everybody. The alternative is…yes, death. Accept this truth. Don’t fight it. The Buddha learnt about this when he went for his first chariot ride outside the palace and saw a sick man, an old man, a dead body and then a monk.
Very few people fear death itself. Most people fear the path to it. What sickness, what accident, what event will lead to it? and when? No answers to these questions, sorry, these ones even google cannot answer for you.
Next come the actions which are so simple but oh! so difficult to do: a good healthy diet, appropriate amount of exercise, restful sleep, stress management, good relationships and having a purpose in life.
There’s one thing which I wish I could make my father-in-law feel, and myself too, and that is, there is no dependency happening here. He is family. At this stage of life he needs the daily physical help but he is not a burden on his family.
Each one of us has pride, which prevents us from taking help from others. The lesson to learn is how to ask for, and accept help and be grateful and thankful for it. The goal is to be interdependent, which can lead to happiness and pleasant feelings, and not independent which is a rather lonely state.
So there you have it, that is how I am going where every man before me has gone.
