Elderly couple walking

Three Life Lessons from my Aging Parents

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…at least that’s the best guess we have of his age. They didn’t do nice, tidy birth certificates in the 1915 Ozarks. Mom is 91. All nine siblings and I have had the privilege of walking with them through the Third3rd of their lives. Here are three life lessons we have learned from aging parents who, in their 90s, are still teaching us:

Life Does Not End at “Retirement”

My Dad was uniquely designed with two amazing qualities. He is a man driven by true compassion, having spent a lifetime in social work motivated by the family and community dysfunction he saw growing up in poverty. He also is a skilled administrator and spent the last two decades of his occupational career directing Los Angeles County’s massive Department of Public Social Services.

Mom is a Registered Nurse. With ten children, she left that occupation earlier in life, but never that calling; ten kids require a lot of nursing. She is uniquely designed to bring order from chaos and handle the sheer joys and massive terrors of ten children at every stage of life…all at the same time. And she does it with very little panic or outward shows of anxiety.

Dad “retired” in the late 70s, shortly after I launched into my young adult life. His calling, however, didn’t end with his occupational career. He remained busy for the next two decades helping administer several financial and educational institutions as a member of their boards. He was immersed in leading the church we all grew up in and spent some time on the road visiting missions overseas.

Mom, of course, remained at the helm of her family as ten children expanded into 35 grandchildren. Though flung all over the globe, she visited often and occasionally hosted them in her home as she did my own family during a year I was deployed overseas.

We all learned this important lesson from them: our lives have a calling. That calling is usually (and ideally) reflected in our occupation. The calling, however, survives our occupation. There is so much more to do in the Third3rd of life and in many ways, being released from an occupation gives much more freedom to pursue the calling.

Aging Parents Require Adjustment

Mom and Dad have not been exempt from the effects of aging, to be sure. The strength of youth fades, memories become slower to respond, and the daily tasks of life become a bit harder and take longer to accomplish.

About 20 years ago, they sold the home we grew up in and moved into a small place in a Southern California retirement community, ridding themselves of most of the possessions accumulated over their lifetime to that point. At the time, I thought the move was, perhaps, a bit premature. Since, I have seen the wisdom of simplifying and getting into a place where the effects of aging are more easily managed.

Dad was still involved in several activities outside the home and Mom remained caring for the two of them—she remains at that job still—and for us as we came through. Those activities, though, could be adjusted to a slower pace and lower level as they aged without disrupting or changing their basic living arrangement.

We all learned this lesson: aging bodies and minds are inevitable. It is wise to accept that and to prepare for it. It is doubly wise to prepare a bit too early than too late. Aging does not, however, mean you can’t continue to be productive throughout your Third3rd. The operative term is “adjust” not “quit”.

Finish With Integrity

We at LDG appreciate the way George Vaillant has defined integrity in his intriguing book, Triumphs of Experience. “Integrity,” he says, is “the capacity to come to terms constructively with our pasts and our futures in the face of inevitable death.”

Integrity is finishing well, having lived a full and whole life; being well-prepared for what we believe to be not the end, but a transition we know as physical death.

Mom and Dad long ago put their earthly affairs in careful order, a great gift to us of the next generation. As my Dad’s strength, sight and memory have faded, he has continued to adjust, narrowing his focus to the two things most important to him: his family and his relationship with God.

Long accustomed to reading large sections of the Bible each day as he aged, his failing eyes now require him to pull most of it out of his memory. While many things are difficult for him to remember well, what he has learned of the Bible are not among those things.

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Both my Mom and Dad have achieved integrity—wholeness—in the Third3rd of their life. They are in the midst of finishing well and are ready to step through the thin veil when their time comes. They know and we know the future that awaits them on the other side of that veil and that we shall see them again in the presence of God.

For now, though, they remain on this side demonstrating to us the meaning of life well lived—in all of its Three3rds.

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