Problematic nature of remembering elderly people in our families

 

    Every big family has their ups and down when it comes to dealing with each other. Most of the time its usually small problems and they can be resolved by communicating with each other. However sometimes there are problems that are thought to be resolved but it ends up not being resolved. When the next problem arises, its always ends up being stacked up. Ultimately, in the long run these problems can end up staining one’s relationship with the other family member or lead to dismissal of a good advice. In my experience, my grandmother from mothers’ side and grandpa from, fathers’ side, when they were alive, they wouldn’t listen to the advice of my parents. My parents would get upset at my grandmother and father because they wouldn’t do what they were supposed to do to stay healthy.

    To start with my grandmother from my mother’s side, ever since I knew myself, she had always been overweight. Her daily routine was to wake up around 10 A.M. have breakfast with my grandpa later, they would sit down in the living room and watch TV until lunch. Since they didn’t have many friends around, after lunch they would keep watching TV until they would go to be. I remember when I was a kid, whenever we would visit my grandmother’s house, my mom would always do the cleaning, do the dishes and so on to help my grandmother. Even though it’s an act of goodness, it kind of did disservice to my grandmother. In a way, doing cleaning was supposed to be her exercise, since my mom was doing it, she wouldn’t move from the couch she would be sitting at. As a result, she grew to have more health problems. Couple of my aunts and my mother would take turns to take her to the doctor’s office, however, she wouldn’t take the prescriptions the doctors would give her. I remember my mother having a conversation with her, about her medication. My grandmother’s response always was, I’m forgetting it to have them. In a way, it’s very understandable for old people to not take their medications on a timely manner However, On top of this, the doctors would ban certain foods because they would make her feel more sick than she already is. For instance, the doctors banned her eating fish, but she would end up eating it anyway. Later, she would excuse herself to use the restroom to puke. She recently passed away, whenever she comes to my mind, its always about her taking care of me, cooking for me, or occasionally her taking me to the parks. However, I feel if she took the doctors advice and stayed away from certain foods, she would still be with us to this day. in this situation, my grandpa is equally at fault, he didn’t pay attention to my grandmother enough to remind her about her drugs or warned her whenever she would eat something she is not supposed to. After she passed away, my grandpa was heartbroken, but I wish he paid more attention to my grandma.

    Secondly, I’ll be talking about my grandpa from my dad’s side, given I didn’t get to know him too much, since he passed away when I was 9. However, I heard stories about him from my grandma and dad. There were both good stories and bad stories, like whenever my dad would give me life advice about the importance of education, he would always bring up my grandpa. He was a construction worker. According to my dad, he would work under very harsh conditions. For instance, during the summertime, in my hometown, the temperature would rise to 40 degrees Celsius, which is equivalent to 104 degrees Fahrenheit. The life lessons were, if you don’t want to work 8-10 hours under the scorching sun, you got to pay attention to the education. Unfortunately, this is where the good things to say ends, when I was little, I used to stay at my grandpa’s house, he would smoke and use tobacco products like dip ( its a tobacco product, people put it between their teeth and lips, and suck on it.) its basically like cigarettes but it gets into one’s blood stream faster since its having longer contacts with lips. I remember my grandpa and father having arguments over the this. However, he would always just smile and keep doing it anyway. The doctors would ban certain things like salt in his food, but he would keep adding it while no one was looking. Like in my grandmother’s case, I feel he would be still alive and doing well if he only paid attention to what my parents were saying.

    These events in opinion a little problematic because, it does highlight their down sides. my parents only warned them for them to do better! I would love to hear the stories from them not from a third party. when the time comes for family gatherings, we always mention them, in good ways, tell funny stories that involve them. Ultimately, its better to remember them good rather than bad, since they were the ones sacrificed their lives to give my parents a better life. However, I’d still like them to be here with us.