I've tasted the middle and it's bittersweet
Thoughts on being sandwiched between generations and across continents
One of the most affecting parts about being “in the middle” of life is this delicate place we exist between generations.
Most of us have kids who are in various stages of our care and parents who either are or are on the verge of, needing our care. We’re at once trying to launch a life into the world while also trying to gracefully and sensitively support those that are on their final chapter. We are being called upon to give the best of ourselves in both directions while also trying to reserve what feels like an ever-diminishing pool of energy and time to ensure we don’t falter and fail everyone who is depending on us. I feel this keenly being single with no fallback financially or emotionally. The talk track in my head is always some version of needing to just hold it all together all the time, or else.
Right now I find myself thinking about all this as I prepare to accompany my British parents back to the UK. In one week from now - literally to the hour as I write this - our plane will be leaving the ground in San Francisco, London bound. It will likely be the last time my parents see US soil and it is the end of a chapter for all of us.
My parents arrived 14 years ago, almost to the day of our departure, to be part of our lives; present grandparents vs. the ones you only see on holidays. Having been an integral part of my daughter’s childhood, there at every birthday, Easter, Christmas, 4th of July, and Thanksgiving, they are going home while they can; before they can’t.
Mum and Dad are in their mid-to-late 70s and my dad has dementia which has been progressing pretty rapidly in the last six years or so. Just like menopause isn’t just hot flashes, dementia isn’t just memory loss. He still knows who we are but he can’t fathom how he needs to get on a plane to go to see his family, even while acknowledging that he lives in a different country. To him, they’re at once on foreign territory and “down the street”, so close that he could direct us there if we’d only just let him go. The ocean is acknowledged as between us all but also in the other direction so that we could really just drive. And he doesn’t understand why we’re moving everything just to come back again, no matter how many times we’ve explained it’s not a holiday and he won’t be returning this time.
His confusion over this and even the simplest aspects of life these days drives a deep agitation and anger that has transformed his personality. My mild-mannered, unfailingly polite, but - ok - always slightly grumpy dad, lives in a world now of paranoia, confusion, anxiety, and depression, not helped much by his decreasing mobility.
Everything that once kept him vital has slipped away in the last six years. He had a fall in 2017 while visiting the UK and broke his collarbone, which meant that he could not drive or play his keyboards; his two greatest loves. After an extended recovery, his confidence shaken, he could never quite bring himself back to the keyboard for reasons I’m not sure I fully understand except to say, perhaps, anxiety and depression. And, truth be told, he’d been a bit shaky behind the wheel, driving sometimes on the wrong side of the road or getting lost going to familiar places, for a while. I drove his beloved and pristine Nissan Murano away from his driveway in the early hours of the morning one day in 2018 and parked it in my own carport so that he couldn’t get himself in trouble anymore. It sat there for months before I could bring myself to sell it, to tell him, definitively, that his driving days needed to be over for his own safety and for that of others. I got my love of driving and cars from my dad. I knew what it meant to take away his freedom as well as another thing that gave him joy, and it was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make to deliver that news. It also broke my heart because I knew being home alone without transportation would only hasten what we had already suspected was coming for a few years.
Indeed, these events precipitated a more rapid mental and physical decline. And it certainly didn’t help that, aside from me and my daughter, he only had my mum and no friends here. His sensibilities were and are deeply British, and he had found little to connect himself to men of the same age here in California.
My mum bears the brunt of it all, of course. I don’t pretend to know what it’s like to live with a man that no longer resembles your husband, only the darkest and previously hidden parts of him, to endure the anger, resentment, agitation, and aggression, day in and day out and know that there is no true escape for either of them at this point. Mum has also lost a practical partner in her day-to-day life. Nobody to help lift a box, put a shelf on the wall, take out the trash, unclog the drain, fix the lightbulb. The little things you take for granted in marriage but suddenly can exhaust you in your 70s both physically or financially when you have to figure out how else to get it all done.
I have attempted to help where I can, coordinating doctor’s visits and managing online forms and paperwork, advocating with medical professionals, and trying to be a place where my mum can safely share her feelings about it all. But there is only so much of me to go around and that is to say not nearly enough. I haven’t always done any of it well. I will no doubt regret not being able to muster more time, patience, and love when it was most needed. I can only say I always did my best at any given moment, with the right intentions and love in my heart if not always in my actions.
As much as I have cherished having my parents be a part of my daughter’s formative years, if someone told me that dad wouldn’t have developed dementia had he stayed in the UK, I would readily go back in time and beg them to stay there, to never come stateside. I often wonder if the move itself, the loss of the familiar, of friends and family, caused it or sped it up. We’ll never know the answer. Hindsight is 20/20.
Now I see my mum’s future days, filled with ever more caregiving, and I understand why she wants to go now, before it will be impossible to move, and so that she can at least live out her final chapter in a place that feels like home, with more family, familiar food, familiar customs, and the sounds of voices that sound like her own.
There are also practical considerations, of course: better - and free - public transportation, the NHS (imperfect though it may be), a lower cost of living, and more assistance for the elderly, to name just a few. They will be better supported by a community in the UK vs just having me to rely on.
I know these reasons, and an honest desire not to “burden” me, are why my mum made the decision to go.
But there is no unburdening yourself from love. I don’t help my parents out of some societal obligation, I do it because I love them. I do it because they did it for me in so many ways, beyond what many might be considered reasonable and without ever a second thought, and for a lot longer than perhaps they should have. I do it because that’s my values and integrity right there, in action. No continent is going to change any of that. Call it burden, call it responsibility, call it whatever you want, it doesn’t matter. I’m not just going to stop doing what I can to help them because I can no longer walk to their front door when they need me.
In this case, the dynamics just shift, to helping remotely (thank God for Zoom), transatlantic flights just to see them, fearing a call in the middle of the night and an impossible timeline that doesn’t get me there fast enough. Far from being in the middle, I’ll be all the way at the end… of a different continent.
Under different circumstances, without a 13-year-old daughter and a shared custody agreement, I might just go with them. But I also have a career that’s finally resurging after a creative pause that turned out not to be such a good idea, a 401k that isn’t nearly large enough to get me through retirement, and that 13-almost-14-year old will need putting through university in just 4 short years. Starting again right now when I just got back on my feet from my last restart seems not only daunting but maybe even quite foolish. I hope to go back to England someday for my own swansong, but it’s not going to be right now.
On the plus side, it does mean that I will get to go home more often and have a place to stay, a home base of sorts. I will also likely see the rest of my family more often than I have in the last 30 years. All good things that go some way to balance the losses, the small moments missed that generally go unmarked in life but suddenly take on new significance when they are no longer routine. I’ve felt us mark them these last six months or so that we’ve had this plan in motion, feeling the lasts quietly in our own ways, being careful not to dwell too much because the decisions are already hard enough.
I’ll also be happy to see both of them enjoy familiar comforts: extended family they have seen so rarely, the BBC, Marks & Spencer, Fish & Chips, Sunday dinners, and perhaps a pub lunch in The Feathers’ beer garden on a sunny but breezy summer’s day. All things that I miss too. The bus outside their new bungalow will take them in one direction to the seaside and in the other to a bustling town with stores and cafes. It’s been hard to get them this far, with the sale of their house and most of their possessions, all the packing and coordinating of shipments and transatlantic affairs... But, I think, it’ll be good for them.
It will also be bittersweet.
You are admired and loved beyond words. No way do we have any regrets , Being a part of your lives for 14 years has given us such wonderful memories and so much joy, those are the things that we will treasure in future years.
This is just another adventure, back to rediscover our beloved country that is the UK, words and all!.
We will video call and get excited when you come to visit, virtual hugs only. If you ever need me I'll be on the first plane out, no matter how old I am!.
My Precious Girls you are my everything couldn't be more proud
Of the wonderful caring humans you are.
Be Happy
This is so beautifully penned, Michelle. I couldn't stop smiling (remembering all those beautiful memories) and tearing up (from resonating and feeling what you and your mum are currently feeling) at the same time while reading this. I cannot say it will be easy. But yes, your trips back home will be way more special than they already were. And most importantly, having them here for the last 14 years is a gift that will keep giving. I love you and your family so much and I will miss them terribly.