By Shafia Parveen
I turned to say bye at the door only to find my father bending down to pick up the newspaper, which he had dropped. The rays of the sun from the window fell on his hair and it was completely grey. I said my quick bye and left for the office all the while wondering has all his hair turned grey or was the sunlight playing a trick. Didn’t he have salt and pepper, yes more salt than pepper, but when did it go all grey?
He is a 76-year-old old-fashioned, upright and orthodox man. He was a cop all his life and even though it has been 16 years since he retired, he still wakes up at 6 am and exercises, takes a shower and reads his newspaper while waiting for my ageing mother to serve breakfast. He continues to have this strange gravitas around him that makes people simper and slightly uncomfortable when they first meet him. For me, he will always be the overly rational man who believes in the importance of duties, sometimes even at the cost of emotional stress and sees a project through if he were to start one. Years ago, when I used to work in another state and came home on holidays, I would see the visible signs of ageing in my mother, but not so much in my father. I didn’t put much mind to it because my mother was both diabetic and had high blood pressure. Owing to a regimented diet she always seemed to have become “smaller” in size every year and the loose skin around her throat and arms had a logical explanation. In retrospect, now that I live with them, I think I didn’t notice the signs of ageing in my father because he didn’t demand any attention. He was always there either reading a book or a newspaper or napping or talking loudly over the phone — he is a bit deaf. Besides, I hung out with my mother more. I followed her about the house like a puppy asking her if I could help and telling her anecdotes about my kitchen mishaps and trivial matters. Therefore, despite knowing that my father was ageing, the head full of grey hair had caught me off-guard that day. I mentally knew he was ageing but never noticed or felt it physically because he is dad and he does his dad-things.
Since then, I started paying more attention to his moves, gestures, expressions and conversations, trying to find how time has taken its toll. I often find myself staring at his face and thinking are those wrinkles? Are those crowfeet next to his eyes? Has he already developed a turkeyneck? While talking about this to my colleagues at the office, one said, “But you do realize we have a maximum of 20 years, give or take, with them”.
In the case of children, ageing is a discernible process. They progress from one class to another, their clothes stop fitting, their height changes, and they often become cheekier, as has happened in the case of my 8-year-old niece, and you dream of the lives they are yet to live. But “growth” or ageing in parents, I realized, is a discreet affair. They look the same, their manner of speaking remains the same, and their paranoia that their child will be kidnapped every time he or she steps out of the house hasn't changed and when you see them 365 days a year the marks of change become almost invisible.
I guess the first sign of ageing in parents is when the parent-child relationship is reversed without the child’s awareness or consent. It is you taking them to the doctor, checking if their medicines are stocked, feeling apprehensive every time they are out on their own or enter a wet toilet, telling them stories after a day out, buying them geegaws and tucking them into bed.
The second sign, I believe, is that they are keenly aware that you are ageing. You will find them talking more about your future than of themselves. Marriage, in case you haven’t joined that circus yet, life and health insurance, savings and inheritances as if trying to cushion you from all possible blows of life.
And the last and the most obvious are the physical signs. The slow seeping away of strength, the shorter hours of sleep, dimming eyesight and falling sick more often.
How come no school or college, so bent on preparing us for the world, doesn’t prepare us for something as integral as dealing with the ageing of our parents?
By Shafia Parveen
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