children of children: having parents with aging parents

I found out this weekend that there is a new genre in fiction: New Adult, which falls "after" YA in the literature spectrum but "before" adult fiction. To be honest, I didn't really know that YA had an official age bracket; in my mind YA meant "interesting" and adult fiction was code for "slow paced and trying too hard to be mature." (Forgive my sweeping generalizations. When it comes down to it I divide by books I like and dislike, and the genre is really a nonissue.) It turns out, though, that Young Adult fiction officially targets high school-aged teens, and it's actually required that the protagonist is between 13 and 17 years of age. New Adult fiction, though, is for young adults in the 18-21 age bracket.

I feel sort of left out by this arbitrary distinction, because I would consider myself a young adult; a new adult, if you insist; not quite a full-blown adult, not yet. Not because my responsibilities and concerns aren't full-blown adult concerns (i.e. rent, food, work, paying my bills, healthcare), but because I think there is a distinct set of issues that adults in my stage of life face. Some of these are generational, and some of them just affect twenty-somethings -- which I suppose could be an age category, but it has always sounded frivolous to me. I guess no label for my peers and I would satisfy me; we all know of my hearty distaste for limiting categories.

Besides, to be fair, even within my immediate friend group there exists a mindblowingly broad spectrum of issues we deal with on a day-to-day basis. Some of my friends are married and some are planning weddings; some of them are having babies and some of them have a kid or two already. Some of us are still on the fence about the whole dating thing to begin with. Some of us are focused on our careers, and some still funneling our energy into education, and some into service. Some of us are just trying to keep our heads above water.

Actually, that last point seems like the most widely applicable shared issue of my personal peer group. We're all just trying to figure out what it means to get by, and then how exactly to achieve that.

Note: Upon further research -- Wikipedia says new-adult fiction covers the "coming-of-age that also happens in a young person's twenties." Target market: 18-30. I'm more accepting of this category now, but still... 18 was a few years ago and I hardly even recognize it anymore.

So this is my guiding star for the blog and how I choose the baby steps I blog about: issues we face as twenty-somethings, and how we navigate them. Many of these issues are very personal, and I struggle to balance the very real considerations of privacy and particularly the privacy of others with my heartfelt belief that secretism and shame and reluctance to talk about the tough stuff is a huge driving problem in our society -- a root cause of mental illness, domestic and foreign political issues, crumbling personal relationships, institutionalized inequalities, and just general personal and societal instability. So, even though my parents and grandparents are some of my most dedicated blog followers, I try to be real on here about things I'm dealing with, whether I worry about what they might be thinking or not.

Speaking of grandparents, and age categorizations, I have been thinking a lot lately about a strange situation that I feel gets very little airtime. Having aging parents is something that people write articles and even books about. It's a gigantic gold mine for advertisers and marketers, and something a lot of people can relate to -- particularly because it's the Baby Boomers who make up The Aging these days.

But what's strange for me right now is having parents with aging parents. The combination of negotiating and navigating adulthood for myself while watching my parents and my friends' parents negotiating and navigating the aging of their parents makes for some pretty serious musing on my part.

One thing we commonly accept as difficult about thinking about old age is that it forces us to face our mortality. I know for a fact that my grandparents (and adopted grandparents, C&S) think about this pretty regularly. I know some of them are more graceful about coping with this uncomfortable truth. It's uncomfortable for our parents, too, when they still have jobs and routines and children who depend on them for food and shelter and education, to think about preparing for the inevitable end, and what happens after. And to think about this for their own parents, who may not still provide a basic livelihood for them, but who did for a good and important chunk of their lives, and who continue to be emotionally intrinsic throughout their lives. And, obviously, there is love that makes things very complicated.

So, now, our parents are having to face a series of odd decisions, like whether their parents are still capable of living on their own safely and comfortably; and if not, then where do they go? Into a "home"? Into our parents' homes? And how do we pay for all that? What about medical care? (We all know how I feel about the healthcare system in the first place; and when making medical decisions for someone else these things get even more complicated, particularly when the person you're making decisions for has always been considered perfectly capable of making those decisions for him- or herself...) And then there is the whole issue of estate, and what the house and unused furniture and other possessions should be used for, or if they should be sold; and tied up in that is what has been promised to the children, and how that will be divvied up.

And underlying all these questions and the others I have not addressed are the lifelong familial tensions and the roles everyone has always played in the family dynamic; plus the questions of personhood which is what makes most issues an issue in the first place: at what point can a person make a decision that directly affects the life of another person? At what point are we incapacitated to the point of losing a say in our own affairs? And then, who is qualified to make those decisions, and who has the final say? Especially, in this case, when there are multiple siblings. Imagine how the situation is magnified each time you add another voice and another family member, with their own worries and values, into the mix.

And what about if they are grieving, too? What if they are struggling to retain control of their own lives and their own selves and feeling it slowly slipping from their grip? They feel less sharp mentally and physically than they used to; they are forced to give up things they are passionate about and have given their lives meaning; they have already attended the funerals of siblings and friends and other contemporaries; they are waiting for dementia to set in, or insomnia, or incontinence -- for the dreaded ills and "second childhood," as we've heard it called.

So, these are the conversations happening among our parents' generation. How does this affect us?

It has been strange watching my parents and grandparents facing old age. Perhaps because of my relative lack of life experience and logistical and emotional involvement in the situation, the answers seem clear to me. I have read Tuesdays With Morrie and the Living Will and I have thought about these things; I have thought about what would happen if (knock on wood) something happened to my parents, what decisions and responsibilities I would be left with. I know my parents pretty well and I can guess what they would say to someone else faced with a similar situation. But I also understand how critical are the nuances that make this situation different from that; I understand, on a removed intellectual level, how emotionally complex these situations are. I know how fuzzy and heavy my mind feels when I am grieving -- or even just stressed.

So I am anticipating making these or similar decisions for my parents, imagining how my siblings and I will handle things, hoping fervently that the bonds I think so strongly bond us together will hold true when we are called upon to act. I'm picking out the traits my parents share with their parents, in what ways they will be similar and different... And in what ways I am similar and different from them. How I say I would handle a question they are faced with, but how that might not be how I would realistically handle it or how I will handle it when the question arises in front of me. What is my ideal model for dealing with an aging parent, and what factors will complicate that by the time it comes up for me. How can we kick the unhealthy patterns and replace them with ones that will work better? And how will I deal with the fact that, despite all my awareness and thought and premeditation, my decades of analysis can only do me so much good when it comes down to crunch time?

I know I'm being vague, but I also know that my family is not the only family looking at this situation. I know some of my friends are watching their own parents' families navigating this strange geriatric territory, and some of my friends are even thinking about navigating it themselves. I know it makes me feel old and very young at the same time, but the important thing is that it makes me think about the big picture of my own life and my life in community and the other lives in my communities. This is something, I believe, that makes us human and it's important that we not brush over it or try to avoid it. I'm taking notes. We'll see if they come in handy when my time comes.