My Father's Keeper: The Story of a Gay Son and His Aging Parents, Jonathan Silin [uplifting novels .TXT] 📗

Bob is not unlike their relationship with my brother’s wife. Although she is an officially documented member of the family, she is not mentioned in their wills. My brother and I are to receive income from a trust, and upon our deaths the money will go to my niece.

Mr. Halperin, a specialist in elder care, quickly declares my par-m y fat h e r ’ s k e e p e r n 3

ents’ plan inadvisable; the small size of the estate would provide little income and be quickly consumed by bank fees. Later, when I point out the inequity of the arrangement since I don’t have children, my parents express outrage at the idea that someone who is not a blood relative might ultimately inherit their money. Mr. Halperin ends the meeting with a description of the financial risks that my parents incur by retaining direct control over their resources should they require prolonged hospitalization or care at a nursing home. He advises them to place their money in a Medicare trust immediately.

We leave the meeting dazed. I because of the emotional energy required to assert Bob’s place in the family, and my parents because they are forced to confront the inadequacy of their carefully wrought plans. Implicit too is the message that their youngest son, the rebel of the family who is not supposed to care about material matters, has taken the lead in developing a practical strategy for the future. Suddenly the ground has shifted. We are crossing a border into another country, the country of the frail elderly.

Although my parents are yet to suffer the multiple medical crises that will bring us to the heart of this new territory, a subtle psychological shift begins in Mr. Halperin’s conference room. It’s been a long and difficult passage from the time when my parents were newly retired and still independent to the present, when they are reliant on a cornucopia of medications and round-the-clock health aides to get through the day. In the beginning, neither they nor I knew where we were going, or even that we were in the midst of a journey. We were reluctant travelers who would have preferred to stay just where we had been during the prior decades. But within two years, a series of life-threatening illnesses rapidly propelled us forward into the domain of the frail elderly. We were each in our own way still struggling to understand the changed situation and our radically altered relationship.

After our meeting with Mr. Halperin that afternoon, I place my parents in a taxi and head for the subway. At Bank Street College, where I teach teachers, there will surely be sympathetic listeners for 4 n jonathan g. silin

the drama that has just played itself out. Although the degree of direct involvement differs, everyone has a story to tell about aging parents. While we once talked about students, proposed changes in the curriculum, and our visits to local schools as we waited to use the copy machine, now my colleagues and I are more often overheard discussing the merits of various nursing homes, health aides, and geria-tricians. Like my immediate peers, I find it difficult to establish the right distance from my parents. At times I am envious of my older brother, who has lived in Asia since his graduate school days and long ago established the geographic and emotional space that characterizes his response to their needs. As I struggle to maintain practical and psychological boundaries when assisting my parents, time becomes blurred. Even as my new role evokes memories of childhood, I am forced to abandon images of my parents as omniscient and invulnerable and myself as the one in need of care and protection. I am forever a child—even as I have become the decision maker and emotional center of the family.

In the beginning of my parents’ decline, I spent a great deal of time testing the present against what I remembered of the past, mourning my lost youth and the parents who were part of it. It seemed the only way to make sense of what was happening, of the radically changed relationship we had entered. My memories were hazy, and aspects of my parents I hadn’t seen before disoriented me. I had a sense of loss at the same time as I wasn’t quite clear about what I had given up. Was my father cantankerous and depressed or socially skilled and ambitious? Was my mother confident and extremely capable or shy and rid-dled with self-doubt? How could I reconcile the disparate images of now and then, of them and me?

Because I am an early childhood educator, I have many opportunities to think about the life cycle in more disciplined, less emotionally laden ways—observation in classrooms, work with teachers, and study of the scientific literature that describes human development.

Spending so much time with my parents, I find that I am not only revisiting my own past but also the very idea of childhood. The as-m y fat h e r ’ s k e e p e r n 5

sumption that childhood is a long-ago event—one that is portrayed in popular books as leaving us either with scars that never completely heal or with deep nostalgia for an idyllic time that can never be recovered—no longer seems certain. The memories, relationships, and ways of knowing I thought I had abandoned years ago are still a dynamic part of the present. Perhaps development works through addition rather than substitution, with our new skills and insights joining rather than replacing old ones. Perhaps childhood is less a foundational moment fixed in the distant past than an open book that can be edited and reinterpreted over time.

In class the night after the meeting with Mr. Halperin, my parents’

lawyer, we discuss Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. My niece, Anne, who grew up in Hong Kong and whose mother is Taiwanese, tells me that it is a