Aging Parents - Our Spiritual Connection

My family and I have watched our mother slowly slide into an Alzheimer’s decline over the past 12 years. She (and we) are lucky though. She is still surprisingly present and engaged with life, even though she can seldom string a proper sentence together. It’s been a surprisingly slow decline, with plateaus after each change, so I guess that’s helped us adjust. But as I write these words now I feel the sorrow underneath the experiences of the past years.

In the past my mother and I were not close in the positive sense of the word. I felt criticized and dominated by her from childhood well into my thirties. We were kind of ‘joined at the hip’ though, in a sort of ‘co-dependent’ way, to use a term that has come into disfavour in the therapeutic world. In 2005 I was told by an intuitive that my mother and I had taken on a contract in this lifetime, which was coming to an end, to be over-involved, too close with each other. It wasn’t clear why.

Over the years our relationship has changed a lot. As my mother’s language and other abilities decreased, the tension in her dissipated. We became closer as she grew more peaceful. Language has become less important; eye to eye contact is the way we connect at a deep level. Somewhere during the process of her decline we began to communicate in a spirit to spirit way.

I know many, many women are in a similar position to myself and my family. They are ‘care managers’ for aging parents. When the relationship has been difficult throughout life, there can be complex, mixed feelings about looking after one’s parent…even spending time with them.

I don’t think there’s any easy answer here. Each parent and adult child’s path is slightly different from everyone else’s. There are resources out there that can help us, such as care facilities and paid visitors, who can take some of the pressure off.