Caring for Children and a Dying Parent

Carvell Wallace answers a letter from a parent who wants to care for his dying mother at his home but worries about traumatizing his young children.

Barring significant abuse, it is your responsibility as a daughter to support your mother as she has supported you. End-of-life care is draining and overwhelming. Losing a parent is absolutely devastating, and doing so while parenting your own children will, at least in my experience, probably be the most emotionally wrenching thing you will ever experience. And yet it’s what you will do.

I was once listening to a radio program where a combat veteran was interviewed, and he said the biggest thing he learned in war was to “embrace the suck.” The phrase stuck with me. When I remember the year that I spent with my own dying mother living with us, my toddler children crawling and creating messes everywhere, our finances struggling, our marriage hanging on by a thread, it was, to put it mildly, horrendous. But if I could go back and give myself any advice, it would be that. To embrace the suck. I was trying to get it to go smoothly. I was trying to avoid discomfort or pain. And as a result, every moment of difficulty was doubly hard. It hurt and, because I was trying to get it to not hurt, it hurt that it hurt. I now realize that I was like a person standing in a monsoon trying not to get wet.