THE TRAUMA OF TAKING AWAY THE KEYS

Katie is looking her most intently journalistic as she questions a representative of AARP about problems with older drivers, in the aftermath of that elderly man killing ten folks as he plowed his car into a crowded market.

“How does the family deal with the most painful issue, not allowing father or mother to drive anymore?” Katie asks.

The AARP-person acknowledges the trauma. As Katie nods her polite, tentative professional nod, the woman dryly suggests that this might be better accomplished by asking “someone more detached and objective, like a therapist, doctor or family clergyman” to break the news.

People who have not yet faced that daunting prospect might actually think that is a good idea, if not an easy out. Children of aging parents, like my kids, who know the eventuality they are facing, might still think it is a decent alternative, but may feel a creeping edge of skepticism, as the advice grates against a higher filial instinct.

And then there are the people who have themselves been obliged to take away the keys, face the trauma, recognize its necessity, yet still struggle with the guilt.

I am one such person.

My dad’s descent into senile dementia came in jagged steps, not a smooth slope. Tragically ironic, but one could chronicle those jagged steps by the evidence he left in their wake: He would work daily on his stamp collection, until one day he simply stopped, catalogues lying open, tweezers, stamps, hinges, all left in place from the day before. Likewise, his photography, his crosswords, his newspapers and magazines, his inability to answer the phone, pay the bills or even click the TV remote.

I, who was obliged to move back home to care for him and my mom, died a thousand deaths while clearing a small space for myself in the den. I asked his permission and removed some of his long-abandoned photographic equipment. But, his confusion still beckoned him to repeatedly demand, “Where are you taking that?” I would explain it to him ad infinitum, but nothing satisfied him nor assuaged my guilt.

All this, of course, came in tandem with taking away his car keys. The car went to my son, but each day my dad would ask, “Where is the car? We have to go shopping!” I would repeat as compassionately as I could, “Joey has it. I’ll do the shopping.” Each exchange stabbed me in the ribcage and forced a little more life out of my collapsing lungs.

All of us who have been there grieve and torture ourselves 10,000 times, not over the rationality of protecting our parent and the public, but over the irrational feeling that we are doing some evil by denigrating a parent’s independence and ability to make responsible decisions. The torment we feel is about being the reluctant catalyst for a journey on the road from which there is no return. The pain is about losing any last pretensions of our own fleeting youth. The trauma is about a little part of us dying, and dying again, with each bit of mortality that we acknowledge in our mom or dad. The heartache is about the futility of yearning for the momma and poppa who enveloped us in their all-protective arms when they and we were young. The grief is about being orphaned while our parents are still clinging to life.

Yet, I believe that any one of us who has faced the trauma would tell you that s/he would not have done it any other way. We would not plead or even infer our martyrdom. We would tell you, however, that we did not abrogate our responsibility to our parents’ safety and wellbeing – that we for a moment sublimated our own grief to face the pain it sometimes takes to care for those who have given us life. We would tell you that, for all the self-recrimination, the thought of some indifferent surrogate letting us off the hook would be even more grievous.

We would tell you that deluding ones self into believing that s/he has “gotten off the hook” is likely to eventually bring even greater intrapsychic torment than facing the responsibility to ones parents personally and forthrightly. My guess is that, despite the AARP’s assertion, any honorable therapist, doctor or clergyman would tell you the same, not be co-opted into absolving a child of a painful mission that s/he alone must accomplish. Finally, we would tell you that the pain we withstood, and that torments us even now, was still the highest articulation of our love.

I pray that my own children will remember the responsibility that I awkwardly took, and the grief that I suffered, in acknowledging that my dad’s vitality had dimmed and that it would return no more. So may it be with your kids. Perhaps they will realize that the fullness of life is messy and not without its price, and that it cannot be sanitized by a gloved surrogate-for-rent and hermetically sealed in a zip-lock bag.

Let them at least know while we are still of sound mind that they have our blessing to take away our keys, literally and figuratively, when we can no longer safely drive our own lives. Let them at least know that the love we show them now might eventually counterbalance the trepidation and guilt that might confront them later. Let them at least know that we love them and know that they love us.

Somehow, I believe that if we give them the message, they will get the message.