Reflections on love, stewardship, and caring for our parents
There comes a day when your parents stop holding your hand, and without anyone announcing it, you begin holding theirs.
No one really prepares you for that transition.
People tell you about ageing. They tell you about Power of Attorney, specialist appointments, medications, and care plans. They explain the legal process, but very few people talk about the emotional one.
As I sign Power of Attorney for Mum and Dad, I realise I am signing far more than a legal document.
I am accepting the responsibility of helping carry their future.
That responsibility is unlike anything I have experienced before.
Every appointment becomes more than an appointment. Every specialist holds one piece of the puzzle. Every test result tells only part of the story. You find yourself collecting information from different parts of the health system, translating medical language into something your parents can understand, asking questions they don’t know to ask, advocating when something doesn’t feel right, and quietly conducting your own whānau risk and consequence analysis.
You become the constant.
- The driver.
- The organiser.
- The advocate.
- The shoulder.
- The hope.
You learn how to allow yourself to feel, but not so much that you cannot hold everyone else when they need you.
Then there is the other parent.
The one sitting quietly at home.
The one whose tears often fall when no one is watching.
Illness rarely belongs to one person. It ripples through relationships. I have realised I am not simply caring for Mum and Dad individually. I am caring for the relationship they have built over a lifetime together.
Their hearts are tied together.
Which means I hold both.
Sometimes technology helps bridge that distance. A simple Facebook Messenger video call allows Mum to be with us while Dad is in hospital. She doesn’t always want to leave the house now. The world feels like a lot. Home, the dogs, the cat, familiar routines, these are the places where she finds steadiness.
Even the family pets become part of the story.
Our cat Jack is nearing the end of his life. Dad told me recently that, while lying in his hospital bed, he thought he felt Jack jump up beside him. Mum has been crying because she knows what is coming.
I found myself having one of the hardest conversations we’ve had. I gently said that I thought we needed to separate Jack’s story from Dad’s illness. They had already sensed it themselves. We all knew that if those two losses became entwined in our minds, it would become harder to hold hope where hope still existed.
Sometimes love looks like gently untangling stories before they become knots.
People often ask me how I balance everything.
The truth is, I don’t know that balance exists.
There is rhythm.
Some days belong to my parents; to my work; to my husband; and to simply getting through the day.
I have intentionally built a portable working life. Wherever my laptop is, my office is. Today that office is beside my father in a hospital room. I’m listening to a board meeting while keeping one eye on him as he tries to sleep.
I know how fortunate I am to have that flexibility.
I also know many people don’t.
My heart is with every son, daughter, partner, sibling, and friend who has had to choose between earning a living and sitting beside someone they love.
None of us should have to carry that choice alone.
I also need to acknowledge another quiet truth.
While I hold my parents, someone is holding me.
My husband never asks whether he should help. He simply does. Before I returned to the hospital this morning, he stayed up late making healthy soup for Dad so I could take it with me. It wasn’t just soup. It was another way of saying, “We’re in this together.”
Support doesn’t always remove the load.
Sometimes it simply makes it possible to keep carrying it.
As I have walked this journey, I keep returning to one thought.
When I was little, my parents were my heart.
They carried my fears before I knew how to carry them myself. They steadied me. They believed in me. They made me feel safe.
Now I hold theirs. Now I hold them.
Not because life has become fair or unfair.
Because love changes shape across generations.
If you’re walking this path too, I hope you know this.
If you’re sitting in hospital waiting rooms, trying to understand specialist letters, worrying about the parent at home while caring for the parent in hospital, juggling work between appointments, carrying conversations no child imagines they will one day have, and wondering whether you’re doing enough……
You’re not alone. There are many of us quietly walking beside you.
And although each family’s journey is different, perhaps we can remind one another of something simple.
Stewardship is not only something we practise in leadership.
Some of its most profound expressions happen in ordinary hospital rooms, around kitchen tables, during long drives home, and in the quiet moments when we choose, again and again, to keep showing up for the people who first showed up for us.