The Blessings and Challenges of Caring for Elderly Parents

The Blessings and Challenges of Caring for Elderly Parents

Fr Luke A Veronis

Several weeks ago, I was at a memorial dinner talking with Titi and Bia about their mothers who passed. I was deeply touched by the love these women expressed for their mothers and the special care they offered during the last stages of their lives. In both cases, the mothers ended up in a nursing homes but they would go every day, three times a day, to feed their mothers and  tenderly care for them. It’s hard and demanding work to care for elderly parents, and yet I was so moved to see how these women didn’t consider the demands as a burden but offered them as acts of simple love for someone they deeply cared for.

This past week my dear 93 year old mother-in-law, Dora, fell as she got out of bed and fractured her hip, wrist and elbow. It was an extremely unfortunate and painful accident. Not only is she dealing with dementia and other health issues but now the pain of broken bones and recovery from hip surgery with her right arm is in a cast. Every day, I marvel at the patient and unlimited love and care my wife offers to her mom. Of course, I’ve seen this care and love over the past years as her mother has declined in health and is in need of 24/7 care.

I admire the strong fortitude, deep love and unlimited compassion my wife offers her mother. But then, I look around at our church community, and I see this same spirit among numerous families. I was deeply touched every time I saw how Laurie and Leslie cared for their mother, or Eleanor cared for all three of her sisters at different stages, or Thomai tenderly loved her mother. I look around now at our church and see Trish carefully bringing her father every week to church, as Alexandra does the same for her father. Of course there’s Evis and Anesti who were caring for three parents, and Nike and Tony caring for her mother. Of course, this is only a limited list of those who do such things in our church family.

I’m inspired to see such beautiful witnesses of who we are every time I see such love shown and given to the elderly. One of the most beautiful, yet challenging blessings in life is caring for one’s elderly parents. It’s a sacred, yet extremely demanding responsibility to care for an elderly parent who can no longer care for themselves. It’ a mixture of exhaustion and grace, frustration and holy joy, a loss of one’s freedom and yet an embracing of self-sacrificial love.

Caring for loved ones with dementia, mobility issues, and aging is hard. Doing the simple tasks — helping one to eat, repeating the same conversation over and over again, patiently guiding one through the simplest daily routines, toileting and cleaning up messes — in truth is something profoundly sacred. It is a living icon of love.

Yes, adult children must rearrange their lives, sacrifice their personal time, and put aside their own desires to serve aging parents. They do it not because it’s easy or convenient, but because it’s right. It’s honorable. It’s a reflection of divine love.

And isn’t this a paradigm of what life is truly all about!

Our society highlights the importance of personal fulfillment, freedom and comfort, doing what makes us happy. We can become very self-centered. The Gospel message, however, offers a very different paradigm. Jesus Christ shows us that the deepest meaning of life is found not in being served, but in serving others; not in grasping for more, but in giving ourselves away in love.

“Greater love has no one than this,” our Lord said, “than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13) And how much more does this apply to our parents and family members — those who gave us life, who sacrificed for us when we were helpless, who now need us at the vulnerable stage of old age.

“Honor your father and mother,” we hear in the Ten Commandments. To honor means much more than to speak respectfully or remember them in our prayers — though that’s part of it. To honor means to care, to serve, to love, especially when it costs us something.

This kind of love — humble, self-giving, sacrificial, steadfast — is what gives life its deepest meaning and purpose. It reflects, in fact, the “mind of Christ” as Saint Paul describes. God is love and His love is not sentimental or solely based on feelings. Love is intentional. Love is hard work. Love implies sacrifice. Love gives when we don’t receive anything back in return. Love bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. This is the divine love of Christ on the Cross.

When we care for our aging parents — when we change a diaper, clean a mess, repeat an answer for the tenth time, stay up throughout the night and get little sleep, or hold their hand as their memory fades — we are, in that moment, sharing in the blessed way of the Cross. It may not feel glorious. It often feels unseen and sometimes painfully lonely. Yet precisely here, in the hidden places of service and sacrifice, God’s grace works within us.

Saint Paisios taught, “When you accept the difficulties of life with love, you receive the grace of God. When you endure your trials for the sake of love, God Himself dwells within your heart.”

Beware of the world’s spirit of selfishness, self-centeredness, of running away from what brings discomfort in order to preserve our freedom. The spirit of Christ contradicts this by inspiring us to embrace the Cross, for through the Cross joy comes to the world!

I’ve often seen that those who freely give of themselves in caring for others — whether for aging parents or family members as well as for strangers and others in need — reflect the most Christ-like spirit that one can see. Their faces shine with a quiet peace. Compassion fills their hearts. Yes, they may be exhausted but there’s a deep inner beauty that only love can create.

This is the love that God calls all of us to adopt. We may not all be caring for elderly parents at this moment, but the Lord calls all of us to live lives of self-sacrificial and self-giving love — in our marriages, our families, our workplaces, and our communities.

Every day, we are given countless opportunities to die to ourselves and to serve others, to listen with compassion instead of reacting with annoyance, to forgive with mercy instead of holding on to resentment, to give freely and generously instead of clinging to what we have in a selfish manner.

Act as a disciple of Jesus Christ. Live the Good News He proclaims. Cultivate with yourself the spirit of selfless love, a spirit that begins with everyday small acts that prepare us for greater acts of sacrificially caring and loving for the most defenseless of people.

My challenge for each of us is to embrace divine love by asking yourself where God is calling you to love more deeply and to serve and sacrifice more freely. Perhaps it’s caring for aging parents. Perhaps it’s through loving service to a spouse or friend in need. Perhaps it’s reaching out to someone you don’t know well who is lonely or lost.

Whatever form it takes, love that costs us something is love that transforms us into the likeness of Christ. May we each find the courage to live this love — faithfully, humbly, quietly, yet with joy — knowing that through these hidden acts of mercy heaven itself is revealed.

If we live this way, then love and mercy will not only transform others — it will transform us, and it will help us begin now living in the Kingdom of Heaven.