This weekend I got my first taste of being in the sandwich generation (caregiving for both parents and kids at the same time). Millions of people juggle these responsibilities and still have to balance everything else that comes with adulting, including some of my friends. But more of them are like me – childless by choice – and have often discussed how this was one of the few stressful situations we would never have to deal with.
Like them, I decided a long time ago that I wasn’t going to have kids, and my one parent is very healthy. My perpetually low energy is a large part of why I made that decision, so imagining what it would take to look after both the previous and the next generations simultaneously was always an exercise in futility. My brain treats it similarly to imagining what a dragon looks like – I can think about it, but I don’t have to invest too much because dragons don’t actually exist.
But this weekend, my parent had a medical issue that briefly incapacitated him. And during that time, I was babysitting for my nieces and nephews, and the littlest of the littles had a nightmare.
Thankfully, my parent was settled comfortably when I heard the crying from the nightmare, so I didn’t have to choose. But I did have to leave him alone to go up and cuddle so the littlest would feel safe enough to go back to sleep. I had never dealt with a kid nightmare before, so I listed everyone who was in the house and wouldn’t let anything bad happen, and then just stayed until they once again drifted off.
Also thankfully, the incident didn’t repeat itself, so the rest of the night I was free to look after parent things like trying different treatment methods to see which worked best, staying up to make sure he took medication at the prescribed time, and sleeping on a couch within shouting distance in case he needed anything.
And this was just a teeeeny tiny slice of what other people go through every day. I was lucky because I had help from other adults and older kids, the timeframe was such that I didn’t have to worry about my job, and the both the little’s issue and the parent’s incident lasted a very short time.
But even in that very short time, after I drove home late on Monday, I completely lost Tuesday because I couldn’t wake myself up for longer than a couple of hours at a time.
I’ve had tastes of parenting when I watch the littles for a week at a time while parents are out of town, and I get what kind of energy drain that is.
And I took care of my mom at the end of her life, but in my early 20s, when I still had energy. But she was never completely incapacitated until the last couple of days, a point at which she was not leaving her bed.
This was like putting those two things together, and the universe doesn’t care what kind of overlap there is or whether you find yourself having to prioritize your parent or your child.
How do people do this? All day, every day, for years at a time? With no resources except what you make for yourself?
I would handle it if I had to – with all my medical issues, very little is a crisis, and I am confident that I could figure it out. But I have a feeling that I would completely lose myself in what I did for others, leaving my health and livelihood at the mercy of circumstance.
That would not be a very tasty sandwich.