It's all very well, to ask for help...!

Difficult and complex...One grows old as one lived.

This is a true story that made me understand how important it is to take care of your emotional health, even if you are 60, 70 or 90 years old, getting old is not a birthday, it's saying goodbye, and saying goodbye hurts, even though we often hide it, especially when our body stops being fast functionally. I lived this stage with my mom, dad and grandmother... and with other people who are no longer in this earthly life.

My great friend Sandra is currently going through a very difficult stage with her elderly parents. All of us who have living and elderly parents have the task of studying the pathology they have, to see, to help what happens to them, and to be able to understand the magnitude of day-to-day life in our homes, in the event that they live with us.

This is how my dear Sandra is living it, and somehow, I'm just thinking about how to help her in the distance, whether it's listening with my big ears to what she's living in her home with sick parents and what this causes in her own family dynamic with her husband and her two teenage children.

Above all it is, very difficult and complex... The acceptance that it is okay to ask for help, for whatever, without feeling sorry, shame or guilt, without expecting perfection only goodwill, from the siblings she has close to her, from family and friends.

There is no way my dear friend can prevent the episodes, from her parents. I told her every day is different with them because as a result of senility they do not remember anything some days, maybe tomorrow they have anger, the day after tomorrow they wake up believing that they are lost, another day they do not swallow their food well, in short, it is a deterioration that we would like to stop, but it is difficult to accept for the one who cares and questions himself... what am I doing wrong?... The worst thing about this situation is that it is not, at all easy to face every day is unexpected and unpredictable.

We all carry something, and we all walk with something: doubts, entanglements, silences that weigh. And, fundamentally, we all have the possibility to ask for help and move from that uncomfortable place where we are “carrying” the rough of any circumstance, in our lives.

Old age is not only biology, it is the reflection of the opportunities or the lack of them, those that we did or did not have throughout life.

To talk about senility, senile dementia is to talk about justice, about access, about recognizing that dignity is not improvised, human dignity is built or perhaps denied. We can't even plan how to build throughout life what is old age like?, ... because that is unpredictable, as it can lead us to the blue apartment, an illness suddenly and what we planned goes overboard. There is a saying "Man proposes and God disposes".

Janitze 🦋