AGING PARENTS FROM BOTH SIDES NOW

Aging parents get old fast.

One day they’re skiing black diamonds on Mt. Hood, wind surfing the Columbia River, or hang gliding off sand dunes in Pacific City.

The next day you’re blending up a hamburger because they can’t eat solid food.

Is that how it works? Not for everyone.

Just like a few days with a toddler shows a new level of what being tired means, it compares to a few years with an aging parent.

With a baby you hope to show them your best side, your hopeful side, and not your exhausted side.

The aging parent is already exhausted and they show what being tired looks like for them.

They are tired to the bone.

The best you can hope for is keeping them comfortable.

Comfort food, comfy chair, a nice afghan. And all of that time stretching to the horizon.

Aging Parents On The Clock

If you’re a millennial with aging parents, did you see how the baby boomers handled their own aging parents?

The Sandwich Generation is on the menu.

Ingredients include elderly, middle aged, and youth.

Roles change with advancing years.

The old bird with a rock solid plan for end of life activities change with the onset of a sudden decline and losing their mobility.

Then it’s assisted living with elderly strangers waiting for the inevitable, however it may arrive.

Whether organ failure, a fall, choking, or a persistent infection gone rogue, the end is ever present.

Aging Millennials On The Clock

This sounds like a joke: Aging Millennials.

But here we are.

I’ve been around these people half my life. You’d think I know something about them.

What I do know is their honesty.

Millennials don’t mind talking about baby boomers when they’re all in the same room.

I’ve heard more than one baby boomer say, “Do they know I’m still here?”

At least one said it. Me.

The only thing worse than hearing shit talk in person, is hearing about it from someone else.

In person gives you a chance to engage, or not engage. Hearing about it is another matter: ‘Why would anyone shit talk me when I’m perfect?’

In case you haven’t heard, you’re not perfect. Neither are your kids or your parents, so deal with it.

Helping Others Deal With It

If you are a helper, I hope you get enough thanks to fill your barrel.

But I know you don’t, you won’t, and that you will continue to help. Some people are wired that way.

They have a name: Nurses.

If your deal is giving gentle reminders, good luck.

This is a blog of gentle reminders. You won’t find faux fire-breathing clickbait bullshit published for the sake of attention.

Based on headline news though, people love their fire-breathing clickbait bullshit just fine.

Add in guns, murder, law and order republicans, and soft on crime democrats for a perfect stew of stink.

BoomerPdx Breakdown

GUN PROBLEM:

Too many mentally impaired men feel a gun is what completes them, not a wife, not kids, not a job, or a house. Not Jesus, but a gun, and lots of them.

GUN SOLUTION:

Promote a culture of communication and compromise where everyone feels progress.

MURDER PROBLEM:

Is there a more violent crime than murder, or the fear of being randomly murdered for being in the wrong place at the right time?

MURDER SOLUTION:

Psychology Today with a current piece:

Key Points:

• Stranger homicide is extremely rare.
• Young men are more at risk than women of being murdered by a stranger.
• Women are far more likely to be murdered by man known to them—a family member, friend or intimate partner—than a stranger.

Law and order republicans stormed the Capitol.

Soft democrats bring them to justice.

For more gentle reminders to help navigate modern times, listen to aging parents, do some moderate shit talk, and proceed forward.