Nonfiction Book Review: Caring for Your Aging Parents

In just 6 weeks, Mom went from an active working woman in her early sixties, taking care of Dad, to a bed-ridden stroke survivor with diabetes and vision loss. The months following this sudden change were stressful for the whole family as we all grappled with this new reality while also grieving Dad’s passing.

As I waited for my house to sell so we could move to Florida, then move Mom in with us, the questions and decisions quickly piled up. I wanted to prepare as much as possible.

As always, I looked towards books for support, and Caring for Your Aging Parents: An Emotional Guide to Nurturing Your Loved Ones While Taking Care of Yourself was one of the first ones I bought. I was clueless about what I was walking into. Most of us caregivers probably are.

I read the book again after Mom passed. In the 7½ years of my caregiving journey, I can’t remember picking up the book at any point, though I probably did look at it a few times in that first year. That’s an indication of how all-consuming caregiving can be.

Written by Raeann Berman, an award winning journalist and Bernard H. Schulman, MD, psychiatrist, professor, and faculty member at the Alfred Adler Institute, Caring for Your Aging Parents starts from the assumption that you see your parent or interact with them regularly. The authors explain how a person goes from middle aged to senior and what that might look like to us children. I kind of skipped most of that with Mom since I wasn’t living nearby and only visited every once in a while. Others may experience it exactly as the authors describe.

I have to confess I got a little upset about that as I read it a second time and had to put the book aside for a bit. But I did want to report on its usefulness so I finished my second read. I was upset because I realized how sudden Mom’s change was, how her medical emergency in the wake of Dad’s death (and her own caregiving journey) had kind of stolen that gradual aging process away from us. Or maybe the process had started but because I wasn’t around, I didn’t see it. That thought isn’t any more comforting, though.

One thing I see through this book is that the definition of when caregiving begins can be fluid. For some, it begins with the first medical crisis that might cause your parent to need help. For others, it starts when one of your parents dies and the other is left alone. For some, it slowly becomes clear that a parent’s faculties or resources are decreasing. But for others, the caregiving journey starts with a plunge into the deep waters of ill-health and poor financial planning.

After starting with the slow and steady path towards caregiving as you interact with a parent who is beginning to feel the effects of aging, the authors then give helpful advice for:

• Changing destructive family patterns – “As our parents age, the patterns that always existed intensify.”
• Communicating in ways that are respectful and clear.
• Taking care of yourself – Caregiving is a stressful second job and your own life doesn’t wait on hold while you do it.
• The importance of connection and support for both parent and caregiver in coping with this new way of life – The authors give a lot of helpful suggestions and resources for this. It can be one of the hardest things to do but I now think it is one of the most important ways to survive caregiving with resilience.
• Managing your feelings of guilt and stress – “With aging parents, most of us end up feeling guilty at some point.”
• Things to consider when moving your parent – Whole books are written on this topic, so this chapter is an excellent overview of the options.
• Talking about difficult things like poor money decisions, parents marrying, end of life decisions, ungrateful parents, time to stop driving, whether to tell ill parents bad family news – If you have an aging loved one, these are very common problems.
• Accepting what you can do about your parents aging – and what you cannot do about it. And finding peace with that.
• And a chapter on dementia which I can’t comment on as Mom didn’t really have memory issues.

One thing this book does not have which isn’t a mark against the book but just as FYI is very specific information on things like health insurance options, Medicare and Medicaid, details on moving your parent, financial and paperwork issues, and more in-depth discussion of long-distance caregiving. You’ll need to read other books or research online and won’t find most of what you need in just one book.

Caregiving is complex and multi-faceted. It involves a wide range of possible activities from general advice and oversight to parenting your parent, from a listening ear to 24/7 nurse or companion, so no single book can address all the variations unless it has Encyclopedia in the title. And maybe not even then.

The goal of the book is to “foster a loving, cooperative relationship” between caregiving child and parent. This is important to aim for – cooperating, supporting them. Not taking over all of their decisions for them. It’s often easy to take over or to think that’s what is needed, but for your own sanity, aim for advising and supporting.

There are many cases where we do need to take over the decisions, such as dementia or catastrophic illnesses like debilitating stroke. But in many cases it’s a good idea to remember our parents are human and respect them by not taking over their lives. I liked this viewpoint that the authors shared. I think it is easy to forget in the caregiving trenches.

There’s even a chapter on considering our own futures. I know I now think of my own aging and end of life more than before my parents died, even though I still expect to live 50 more years. As the authors ask, “What will happen when it’s our turn to be elderly?”

Anyone with parents, step-parents, in-laws, even your grandparents if you’re helping them, will be helped by this book. Read it sooner rather than later. It has so much about communicating with and understanding an aging loved one in the early stages of their aging journey and your caregiving journey. I warmly recommend Caring for Your Aging Parents as a first read when you begin to wonder about how your parents are doing or want to prepare or know what to look for. And also if a sudden emergency reminds everyone that at some point, your parent may need help. The book is informative, helpful, and easy to read about the things you can – and cannot – do on the caregiving journey. It is a reassuring guide to the emotional roller coaster that you and your family will soon be on – if you aren’t on it already.

Book cover by carynwrites.com
Hands by Sabine van Erp from Pixabay / filtered from original