Spending A Night With My 87-Year-Old Sister

With my remaining sisters Maggie (my right) and Fannie Mae
 (my left) in January 2018.

"I don't want to be treated like a baby," my oldest living sister repeatedly reminded me as I spent a night looking after her last week, "but thanks anyway for 'baby-sitting' me!"

Fannie Mae, single and independent all her adult life, has until recent years not only been totally capable of taking care of herself, but as a registered nurse and a midwife who's served in far off places like Belize and Paraguay, has devoted her entire life taking care of others. She also devoted herself to the love and care of an adopted autistic child, my niece Nina, abandoned as an infant in Paraguay.  So having others doing things for her like parceling out her medications is hard for her, to say the least.

Spending a night with my aging sister some 45-minutes away reminded me again that if we live long enough, most of us will get to that same place when our roles are reversed. We will once again, as when we were young, need others to care for us when we experience aches and pains and suffer from illnesses.

My sister, with a heart condition and considerable arthritic pain, is blessed by being able to live in an apartment with only a garage separating her from two of her adult nieces, Barbara Ann and Sharon Schrock. These wonderful women share the other part of the duplex with their 91-year-old father Alvin, husband of their late mother and my sister Lucy. Each of the nieces has part time work of their own and yet are dedicated caregivers for whom we can never be grateful enough.

In my own experience of aging, I increasingly wonder just how Alma Jean and I will navigate the next chapter of our own life journey. I hope we can look back on a life as well lived as that of my sister Fannie Mae, and experience some of the same kinds of care from our loved ones when we come to our journey's end.