Growing Older And Growing Up

A visit home for Father's Day is the perfect opportunity to pay attention to details and tie up loose ends.

We spent several hours completing the In Case Of Emergency binder, something dad had been working on in his spare time for the past year at my urging.

Dad's health is not what it once was. I gifted him this advance planning template to ensure that his tremendous love for mom would be manifest in making any unexpected transition as painless as possible for her, even though we hope that day is a long time off in the future.

It was instructive to read his entries aloud and beta test them to ensure that the person the binder was intended for (me) could follow the directions dad jotted down.

Notations that made perfect sense in dad's head (Document A is located in the file cabinet in my office) were found to be insufficient when read aloud, for example, when I pointed out that there were no fewer than 6 file cabinets located in his office.

There was one moment dad pulled out a sheaf of papers so well-worn they appear shredded containing all the computer associated mental reminders he used day-today.

I'm not judging - I jot digital notes on my phone to similar effect. We signed him up for a free Lastpass account and he granted me emergency access to his password vault so that I won't have to track down or decipher that sheaf of papers in the future.

There were also small moments of gratitude. Dad can be stubborn, and his default mode is impatience (I know it only too well; I share this trait).

Thankfully, he took to heart my advice about avoiding being anywhere above ground level, and waited for me to visit so I could stand on a stepladder to replace a couple of clock batteries.

Every disaster averted provides no small amount of relief in my ruminating mind.

I recalled a tiny seventy something patient from a decade earlier, stubborn like the best of them, whom I once cared for.

When a colleague notified me he'd was heading to the MD lounge for 15 minutes to grab a bite, I asked if he had any patients I ought to keep an eye on. He mentioned an elderly head trauma that had come in after falling 6 feet from a ladder while clearing rain gutters - negative CT of the brain so far, guy looked "like a rose."

Within five minutes of my friend's departing for his food break, the patient's nurse sought me out. He now exhibited profound confusion and lethargy. I called up the CT tech, got the patient on the scanner, and was on the phone with the radiologist in a case-reportable 10 minute span.

As my friend returned from lunch, we were preparing to intubate the patient for what had transformed into a catastrophic bleed in the brain.

Dad and I are now in this bizarre in-between state. We know our time together will be limited. We undertake what we might once have considered morbid exercises together as joint shows of love for those who will be left behind.

The weird part? It's left us in a state of profound appreciation for the moment we inhabit.

A coffee together in a breeze beneath the California sunshine is perfect.

Watching the kids cavort in the pool, I delight in his vicarious pleasure.

Fulfilling the "honey do" list of minor home maintenance here and there, which the former me might have chafed at, is now an opportunity to show love in a tangible way he appreciates.

We get along better than ever, and our time together has fewer moments where I regress to my worst and least mature self.

It's bittersweet, but it's taken my parents growing older for me to finally begin to grow up.