written by Allan J. Hamilton, MD, FACS |  

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened.
– Mark Twain’s Autobiography

As baby boomers , some of us have already lost our parents . But, for the fortunate rest of us (those who still have surviving ones), we have to worry that, healthy as they may be, they can still start to lose their marbles.

If and when they do, then, as their children, we will have to ford that most treacherous of maturational currents: the river of forgetfulness. Wading through those waters, we metamophisize. Instead of just being the children of our parents , we become the parents of our parents . We become caregivers, or get labeled as providers.

We can give it whatever dissimulating titles we want. But clever names do not take away from the fact that there comes a poignant moment in our lives when our parents no longer are taking care of us, but we are now responsible for looking after them. It is hard to know the exact instant when this transformation can begin but I will give you one vital clue to recognizing it – you’ll laugh, at least the first time it happens.

I recently crossed this Rubicon at the front gate of my own property. My mom had been complaining about some problems getting the gate to open when she would come over to visit me. That was bad enough. But, Mom had made matters worse. After three or four consecutive attempts at punching entry codes, the system is programmed to go into a protective, digital hibernation to prevent people from trying to break in. Great. Mom, frustrated that the system had become unresponsive, would resort to getting herself buzzed in. By me? Fine. But if my response was not instantaneous, then anyone was fair game. She contacted, it would seem (and current estimates vary) anywhere from half to all of the folks listed as residents at the complex.

I felt a corrective effort was needed to quell a growing and coalescing constituency of irate neighbors. I use the term “neighbors” loosely because I did not want them to think it was my mother who was the culprit. So many conversations went this: “Yeah! You too? Yeah, some old lady calling to get buzzed in at six o’clock in the morning. Weird. Can you believe it?

To fend off a burgeoning vigilante militia movement or some other kind of organized response, Mom and I decided to check that her entry code was still working properly. An added wrinkle: I had recently had surgery for a broken leg so I was on crutches and couldn’t drive. Mom had given me a lift to the doctor’s office and as we drove back home and pulled up to the gate, we thought we might use the occasion to check out her entry code.

Since my initial working hypothesis was that Mom must have been pushing the keys in the wrong order or sequence, I clumsily clambered out o...

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