What Losing My Parents Taught Me About What Comes Next

Minutes before my father died, I was standing on a busy street in Paris. My husband and daughter where somewhere deep inside a department store. Though the call was foreseen, I wasn't expecting it, I stepped out of the building to answer the nurse.

A couple of years ago both of my parents died. I couldn't be present in the traditional way "being present" is understood. I was actually on the other side of the planet when it happened.

Dad had been going through a rollercoaster of vertiginous relapses ever since collapsing in the street from a diabetic crisis some four months earlier. Their home had turned into a geriatric care unit my brother and I managed from a far, thanks to the very few family members and acquaintances that remained back in the already broken Venezuela I had left behind decades ago.

As I talked to my father through his final moments, I felt as if I were standing alone in frozen time while the rest of the world sped up around me, on mute, on that crowded sidewalk. Without hesitation, a wiser part of myself came online, able to tell him what I believed would give him peace and help him let go. I yearned to hold his hand so much, all I could do was to embed every word with a solid presence, making each one focused and intentional as if with each word I were stroking his forehead, holding his hand, holding his soul, hopping that in that instant, his energy and mine were one on, even across continents.

Caring for aging parents pushes us, whether we want it or not, into a new stage of growth. We are confronted with our own maturity and our inevitable mortality. It forces a sobering re-evaluation of our relationships and a final reckoning with closure, that can look like: with which of the "gifts" from their legacy we decide to honor with continuity or leave behind.

The relationship with my parents was not always an easy one. I feel I don't believe I could have turned the experience of their passing into the gifts it became in my following chapter if my mindset had remained narrow and fixed on the negatives they left behind.

Releasing the stories that bounded us in pain, regret and shame helped me see the love embedded in the why they were the way they were. It let me relate to them with compassion and then aim that same compassion to myself to build my best continuation.

Here are some of the things I've come to understand coming out on the other side of it:

• They did the best they could without the tools you and I have in this day and era. We are an unusual generation with tools and conversations that did not exist before, we are also standing right in the middle of a changing tide, between that of our parents that only knew what came from theirs and that of our children, whose awareness teach us a new, more sensitive way of relating to each other, and also help us consider the difficulties our parents experienced now that we've matured enough.
• We become our parent's parents. Extending to them the patience we would give a child is our gift to them, honoring the protective adult they were once for us. And if they weren't, then considering with compassion the fears that brought in their short comings.
• Seek support for yourself, too. As you accompany them in their final moments, it's not only okey but necessary for us to seek out the support we need. There's an important emotional process that needs to be expressed, observed and integrated from this experience.
• Humor is necessary. We need plenty of humour, for them and for us. It brings in a powerful light that transmutes the darkest settings. Dying and humour can coexist because it helps us move out of the energies of fear and dread. It's one of the things I deeply appreciate from my Venezuelan heritage.
• Be present, even when you can't share the experience. Even though you can't fully share the experience of the dying, you can support a dying person by being present and intentional in your listening, your compassion and efforts of awareness.
• Don't be afraid to ask what you never brought yourself to ask before. Give them the opportunity to reminisce, to reflect, to express what your previous relationship with them didn't allow.
• Write a eulogy, even if you don't get to read it aloud. Give yourself the time to bring up in your mind the memories of the gifts they left you, the gifts that contributed to the better parts of you, that you may never have paused to consider. Integrate the good, the ugly, the learned. Let this time help you mature by consciously choosing what will become the legacy you hand down from your elders.

Caring for my dying parents revealed a kind of emotional resilience I did not know I had. It gave me a clearer sense of what will truly matter in the next part of my life. Small problems lost their power to upset me the way they used to. And even though there were moments of intense heartbreak, going through it proved me I could handle hard endings, giving me the courage to step with even more conviction into my authentic self, in this precious time I have left.