It almost seems silly at
first thought to call yourself an orphan when you are in your fifties or
sixties or even seventies. When I first thought of this concept, I did an
online search for "adult orphans". Low & behold, there is a ton
of stuff written about experiencing life as an orphaned senior. I learned that
I was far from alone in feeling like a grown up, or even elderly, orphan.
Like me, many people have
had the responsibility of caring for our aging parent. I spent over thirteen
years as a caregiver for my dad. I talked to him daily, drove him to medical appointments,
ran his household, managed his finances, coordinated caregivers & spent
countless hours doing numerous chores or making decisions for him. I learned
far more about wound care, physical therapy & other necessary medical
procedures than I ever dreamed possible.
Fortunately, at the end my
father didn't suffer. We had visited him that morning & he was his normal
self. That afternoon he apparently had a massive heart attack. Paramedics got
his heart beating & inserted a breathing tube allowing us to make it to the
hospital. Paperwork was in order & his wishes were honored. He never
regained consciousness & when the breathing tube was removed, he passed
quickly with me holding his hand in the ER just a couple months before his 90th
birthday.
An article I discovered
online summed up some of my feelings pretty well: "Some of us expect to
feel relieved when we no longer have these responsibilities & are
blindsided by the depth of the empty hole left by the passing of our final
parent. For others, the shock comes from feeling like an orphan. Realizing that
the last person who loved you from the day you were born is gone, & with
it, the generational layer between you & your own death can be overwhelming." I won't say I was blindsided or overwhelmed but I definitely had similar thoughts.
Another website compared
losing the role of caretaker to that of an empty nester when your children left
home. Suddenly, you were no longer responsible & involved in the day-to-day
lives of someone extremely close to you. It can be quite unnerving to realize
that as an adult orphan not only have you lost your role as someone's child,
but you are now next in line to leave this earth.
As life would have it, one of my best friends who
is three years older than me, lost her mother at age 99 just a few months after
I lost my dad. She is my friend of 45 plus years who moved to Australia
When I mentioned these thoughts to another friend
(also in her early 70s) who lost her second parent many years ago, she commented
that due to Alzheimer's, she had become an adult orphan long before her mother
passed away. If any of you have similar adult orphan thoughts or feelings, I'd love to hear
them.
I'm still kind of at loose
ends & wondering what life after prolonged caregiving will be like. Of
course, my son & granddaughter take center stage in my life but my major daily
responsibility is gone. I don't take my cell phone upstairs every night anymore.
I'm not awakened at 7 AM by a phone call from a caregiver. I can go on vacation
without worrying about my father. An 800 number call doesn't scare me (it may
have been Life Alert calling that my father fell, again).
For now I'm enjoying doing
not much of anything. Watching "Ellen" or "Rachel Ray" is
my guilty pleasure in the afternoon. Going to lunch with friends is just a fun
afternoon rather than a respite from caregiving. Sure, I miss my dad. I still
think, I have to tell Dad something I see or recall. I wish he was here to
watch sports with like we always did. And, he was my best wine drinking
companion a couple afternoons a week. I'll always miss that. Such is the life
of an adult orphan.
