KARACHI:
There is a saying that “growing up is all about watching your parents grow older and dying a little inside every time”. It is a heartbreaking reality and an inescapably challenge to watch your parents grow old and become frail. Summoning the courage and strength to embrace the cycle of life is inexpressibly sad but imperative. We get to live. Likewise, we get to die.
Every single time the reality sinks in that my beloved parents will not be with me my heart breaks a little. Unfortunately, there is no escaping this stark reality. One of the few ways to calm such anxiety is to focus on effective caregiving techniques like nurturing, reassuring, protecting, loving and ensuring no compromise on our parent’s dignity and respect. This is what true and pure love is all about, allowing us to be as good of a son or a daughter as is humanly possible. To avoid caregiver burnout, especially in our part of the world where there is no concept of assisted living for the elderly, it is imperative that we vent our anxiety as catharsis in order to remain calm in stressful situations. There are bound to be issues that will require our redressal, with most of them being beyond our competence making us feel helpless and frustrated. In my humble opinion, give parental care problems your best but do not try playing God. We cannot defy nature.
Acceptance is critical when one is bound to face the ultimate consequence — death. Let us not escape by turning a deaf ear or hiding the first signs of aging with anti-wrinkle creams. It is a futile exercise to search ways to deny, avoid or soften the pain.
Salma Tahir
Lahore
Published in The Express Tribune, October 6th, 2021.
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