Loving Your Parents When They Can No Longer Love You

Book Description
We live in the age of aging. Because of this, there are a number of challenges presented to the familyamong the most complex is the job of caring for frail parents. Weaving practical help together with personal stories, this book will help people embrace the job of caregiving as an opportunity to learn more about life and God.

From the Back Cover
Insights on Caring for Any Aging Parent • Timely guidance for the challenges • Encouragement for the journey You had plans for this time in your life, but now a parent needs care. It’s a confusing, stressful, and exhausting time. But it can also be a time of remarkable spiritual growth. Loving Your Parents When They Can No Longer Love You helps you navigate your role as caregiver with God’s grace and guidance. And it alerts you to the difficult issues you may face, such as: • Legal and financial decisions • How much care will be needed and when • Evaluating different living options • Depression, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease • Caring for a parent who has mistreated you • Accepting and planning for death Most important, this book helps you embrace caregiving as a spiritual journey that will deepen your faith and strengthen your character. It not only opens your eyes to the realities of caregiving; it also teaches you how to allow God to change your life for the better.

About the Author
Terry Hargrave (Ph.D) is nationally recognized for his pioneering work with aging and intergenerational families. He is president of Amarillo Family Institute, Inc., where he and his wife maintain a therapy practice and is a professor of counseling at West Texas A&M University. Terry and his wife, Sharon have two children and are primary caregivers for Sharon's mother.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Loving Your Parents When They Can No Longer Love You
Copyright © 2005 by Terry Hargrave
Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hargrave, Terry D.
Loving your parents when they can no longer love you / Terry D. Hargrave.
p. cm.
ISBN-10: 0-310-25563-5 (softcover)
ISBN-13: 978-0-310-25563-5 (softcover)
1. Aging parentsCare. 2. Aging parentsCareReligious aspects
Christianity. 3. Frail elderlyHome care. 4. Adult children of aging parents
Family relationships. 5. CaregiversPsychology. I. Title.
HQ1063.6.H37 2004
306.874dc22
2004023478
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible:
New International Version. NIV. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International
Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy,
recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without
the prior permission of the publisher.
Interior design by Beth Shagene
Printed in the United States of America
05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 /.DCI/ 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Introduction 9
Part 1: Embracing Caregiving and Aging
as a Spiritual Journey
1. In Two Years She Will Be Dependent 15
The fright of aging What is aging? The courage of faith, the
humility of love Heroic to humble A worthy and courageous
woman with a problem Aging: who needs it? When love is
difficult Embracing the aging process The struggle continues
2. It Is Never Too Late to Finish Family Business 37
Why are we obligated? The cry for blessing There is always fence
work to be done But is it Christlike? It was worse for him than
it was for us There is a chance it may be fixable Unfinished
business and peace
Part 2: Embracing the Work of Caregiving
3. Aging and the Way We Were Not 63
I feel so guilty Growing old: the times, they are achangin The
Bible and caregiving Three biblical principles The power of the
powerless Were in it together Life on the anvil
4. When Physical Things Cant Be Fixed 83
What happens when we age? Assessing the caregiving need
Three special issues that need addressing Know when to take the
plates down
5. Our House Is a Very, Very, Very Confusing Place 111
Like stealing a watermelon The options What care is
appropriate or best? Moving out and leaving home Help, home,
and precious memories
6. Where Is the Kitchen? Dementia and Alzheimers 139
How do you know if its Alzheimers? Caregiving and Alzheimers
How about you? Do this in remembrance
7. Show Me the Money: Legal and Financial Issues 165
Control of finances and fiscal decisions Making a plan Help
available: Medicare, Medicaid, and other insurance The power
necessary to make it so Medical decisions and advance directives
Wills Here we go again
8. The Struggle of Family Relationships 187
What if caregiving was needed and no one showed up? Some
words to the wise about family relationships and caregiving Where
is the fairness?
Part 3: Embracing the Hope of Defeat
9. Depression and the Fall to Nowhere 207
Depression is not the blues Causes of depression Treating
depression The spiritual lesson of depression Commissioned to
a special work
10. We All Get Stung by Death 229
Avoidance is the norm Stop the avoidance Making dying a
victory Talking about death and making plans Making sense out
of life: the exchange of wisdom The giving of a blessing
Caregiving for a dying parent At the moment of death The
spiritual lesson of dying Its hard to lose a hero
Introduction
This is a book about struggle. It is the struggle to be weak
when we desire to be strong, to be helpless when we want
power, and to be sacrificial when wed really rather be selfish.
This is a book about struggle.
It is not a struggle that exists so much between the generations
of caregiver and older person but rather one between
all people and life. Aging, in this generation and at this time
in history, just happens to be the vehicle through which the
struggle seems most evident and present.
On the one hand, we desire to control our destinies, implement
our wills, and enjoy the freedom to choose when, how,
and who we love and who will love us. Western society bombards
us with these desires. We want to decide our career
paths and educational backgrounds, achieve financial security
and neighborhood safety, and have convenient and close relationships.
Most of the time we can ignore situations where our
needed talents receive little compensation. We can remain
ignorant of the needs of the world and so use our financial
resources for our own desires. And we can cocoon ourselves
tightly in predictable and emotionally neutral relationships.
But then theres the other hand. God wants us to understand
the value of vulnerability, weakness, and sacrificeand
it is in these vulnerable states that Gods power becomes active
in our lives. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:10, it is in our
weakness that God makes us strong. Most of us know this fact
and feel more than willing to cooperateat least, until weakness
really touches our lives. The struggle for us comes down
to becoming the weak ambassadors of a mighty God, in the
face of our desire to exercise control, power, and choice.
Enter aging. Precisely at this time in history when we seem
to have so much ability to control information and so many
reasons to get self-focused, our parents and family are living
longer than at any period in modern history. Medicine has
devised ways to keep people alive, but a good percentage of
them will have chronic health problems that demand care from
others. Who will provide this care? If you are reading this
book, chances are you are currently a caregiver or see caregiving
in your near future. In caregiving we lose a good part
of the control of our lives, we become powerless to determine
outcomes, and we must put our needs behind theirs. Aging
and caregiving in the twenty-first century force us to struggle
with the reality of life. This book is about how we work within
this struggle but also how we are changed by the struggle.
Aging, of course, is not optional. It is like a giant vacuum
cleaner that will eventually suck us all up. You can pour on the
lotions to smooth out the wrinkles and mix in the dye to color
the hair, but you will not be able to cover up the problems
and challenges that aging presents to the family.
Perhaps the biggest problem of all occurs when we confront
the complex reality of giving care to an older parent.
When you consider your busy schedule, how deeply you long
to control your own life, and how frail and needy your parents
have become, the job of caregiving can stress the living daylights
out of you.
Loving Your Parents When They Can No Longer Love You
comes out of personal experience. I have cared for older
people in a personal care facility, and my wife and I have
cared for my mother-in-law, who has Alzheimers disease. This
book will bring you face-to-face with some of the hard-hitting
realities that must be faced, such as taking care of your parents
legal and financial issues, choosing where to live, the
type of care your parent will need, and how to deal with physical
and emotional health problems. Much of what I suggest
comes from my years of studying aging families as a professor
and therapist, but most everything in this book has been
worked out in the school of hard knocks in my own experiences
of caregiving.
This is not just another book about how to care for aging
parents, however, or even how to care for yourself while you
provide the care. It is at its core a book on how you can lovingly
and tenderly embrace the job of caregiving as a spiritual
journey that can deepen your faith while strengthening your
character.
Caregiving is both a story and a journey. I intend for this
book to help you grasp the importance and opportunity of the
job you have taken (or are about to take) and to assist you in
creating your own special story and journeyand what a journey
it can be! A journey to the depths of learning how selfish
and withholding we can be, to the difficulty of managing the
day-to-day work of care, to the desperation of learning how to
hold on to God when no more hope or energy remains. I hope
yours will be a journey and story like mine, one that has
changed me in ways from which I wish never to recover.
Introduction
PART 1
Embracing
Caregiving and
Aging as a
Spiritual Journey
Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of
many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith
develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that
you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
James 1:24
Congratulations! You have been elected. Maybe you
slid into the job a little at a time; perhaps it
happened with a single phone call. But if you are
reading this book, chances are you are, or very soon
will become, the caregiver for your older parent. It is
a big job, and at one time or another, it will take you
to the very edge of your physical and emotional
strength.
Whats in it for you? All sorts of good things, like
brokenness and humility. Consider caregiving a
spiritual obstacle courseitll do you good, but itll
also present you with a series of potent challenges.
While we tend to equate comfort with joy, the
biblical writer James talks about a different kind of
joy: the knowledge that we are being made into
spiritual people, people who at the end of life will
lack nothing. God means for life to mold us into a
spiritual condition fit for the kingdom of heaven. It
is not our prerogative, nor is it in our control, to fit
the spiritual life around the pleasures of this earthly
life. For those of us who live with the obligations of
caregiving, nothing is more difficult than to grasp
this concept. Yet nothing is more precious.


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