Nurse Next Door

The conversation amongst women is starting to shift

When I use to exchange pleasantries with business peers, it was usually about our children. With friends, we would swap war stories of diapers, daycare and later, teenage escapades.

Like all demographic shifts, that affect our life and lifestyles, the change starts slowly and at a point in time usually around a single event that “aha” moment comes, when you realize things are going to be different.

Mine came about a year ago when I went to have a glass of wine with a colleague – one of my most favorite women in business ever – for drinks and a catch up. We have a lovely bond, and I would consider her a friend – but while we know the approximate ages of each others grown children, and about partners and vacations – we did not know the personal private stuff.

I bustled in a few minutes late. “How are you” she asked with a kiss. I could not help myself, all boundaries crumpled. “I am the world’s worse daughter”, I said. My Mom’s health had been deteriorating in a way that is confusing – one minute she is cooking a dinner for the seniors centre for 200, the next she cannot leave her bed. Her British stoicness, still present was beginning to waiver. We had moved from “Of course I am going to my darling” to ” I don’t know if I can do that”.

In the mix of grown children and business and all the day-to-day stuff – I phone usually her every second day. But, I had not seen her for weeks. And I know what matters most as you age, is having company and feeling valued and loved. I had just got of the phone with my Mom (Granny Jose) and she was trying so hard not to feel tossed aside, lonely and sad, but it was obvious that is what she was feeling. I was without a doubt the worst daughter in the world.

My lovely friend? What did she say? “You could not possibly be, because, I am the worst daughter”. Her Mom has Alzheimer’s, and has been in a home for years, she had missed the last few weeks of seeing her. I don’t think we even exchanged children updates that day. It was all about Mom’s.

Since then I have been so acutely aware that, more often than not, conversations with women involve’ what they need to do; what they haven’t done; or where they are struggling with, caring for their parents.

The conversation has shifted. We moved from trying to figure out how to be good parents to trying to figure out how to be good children again. Caregiver children.

Judy Brooks is the co-founder of Blo-Blow Dry Bar, speaker, and board member for many well known Canadian businesses and organizations. She is also Nurse Next Door’s Chief of Staff. Her mother, Granny Jose, is on our Seniors Advisory Board.