The Handbook

Life, grief, the aging of parents, the empty nest syndrome when your beautiful children start to wean themselves from you and find their own wings….their own flight pattern. It all goes hand in hand. If you are my age you are most likely experiencing the same. I recall leaving the hospital with my first born baby Charlotte and thinking that it should be illegal. Where is the handbook? Where are the rules and regulations? This seems to be a common theme in life. Where is the handbook?

I moved back to my hometown this past summer for lots of reasons. Perhaps it’s time for me to start a new life somewhere else I thought? My Dad is aging and it was time for me to be there for him and be with family. My youngest had just left for college….it was time for me to shake things up. Well, things didn’t go as I had planned…I didn’t know how to be there for my Dad, I didn’t know what to do…everything that I touched seemed to fall apart. I was out of my element….I felt as if I was out of my skin. I searched high and low for the answers of how to support an aging parent with Parkinsons and dementia and that had lost their soulmate, the love of their life…I didn’t know what to do and felt myself slipping away all at the same time. Where was the handbook on how to care for an elderly parent? At the same time I knew that I hadn’t truly mourned the loss of my Mom who had passed the previous year. I was simply in “do” mode…do this, do that, be this, be that….well that didn’t serve me at all. I found myself back in my parent’s home with each and every corner of that house flooding me with memories of my Mom….and that’s when I finally let go and sobbed. Where the hell was my Mom I screamed at the top of my lungs one night…..I was utterly convinced if there was any point in my life that I desperately needed her that it was then….she would tell me what to do….she would tell me how to care for my Dad…she would have all the answers. I used to call her and she would answer the phone “hi darling” and she would always have the answers for me…..where was she now? I cried more those past couple of months then I had in a lifetime. I begged for my Mom to come to me in my dreams. I pleaded with her to give me signs. Mom, please tell me where I can find the damn handbook?

I am learning that we can only take each day as it comes…one day at a time…we do the best that we can do. We follow our hearts and wherever that leads. There is no handbook, there are no rules…..we need to dig down and do what we feel is right and yes we learn along the way even if it is difficult. The highs, the lows, the laughter, the tears…it all simply goes hand in hand. xx