How to Handle Seasons of Caring for Aging Parents | S6 E4

Mary Alessi [00:00:00]:

And there's something that I think is so beautiful to teach that to your children. It's not a burden, it's not an obligation, it's not a pain in the neck. It doesn't put us out. It's priority.

Steve Alessi [00:00:10]:

Right.

Mary Alessi [00:00:11]:

Because we don't know how much more time we have with her.

Steve Alessi [00:00:24]:

Hello and welcome to another episode of The Family Business with the Alessis, where family is everybody's business today. You are listening to Steve Alessi and Mary Alessi. We're in the podcast booth and we're going to be talking about something very fun today, Mary, because it's a good season that we are in in our life. But I just want to say congratulations to our audience because they are keeping us out there. They are driving us with great encouragement.

Mary Alessi [00:00:59]:

And their great comments.

Steve Alessi [00:01:00]:

Yeah, their encouragement through their comments and their posts and their shares are really helping us stay motivated. I was hearing from Allen Paul that most podcasts don't even make it past seven episodes.

Mary Alessi [00:01:15]:

Yeah.

Steve Alessi [00:01:15]:

And here we are on season number six of our podcast. That's 120 plus episodes that we have recorded. We are well over the top. 2%. I mean, about 2% of podcasts of all podcasts make it this far.

Mary Alessi [00:01:34]:

And don't you feel like we're just getting good at it? Like we have more to say than we ever did? I think we was concerned in the beginning, really, like, are we going to have enough to talk about?

Steve Alessi [00:01:43]:

Well, it started the whole reason we did this, because we get together and talk about things on our porch, at home or in the car and we have some of our greatest conversations, you and I, about trying to figure things out when we're alone. So we thought, you know what, let's take this beyond what we do on a Sunday, because our family business is ministry. We do church. But on Sunday we get up, we give about a 30, 40 minutes speech, as many of them refer to it as talk. But then there's other things we'd like to be able to say. So we're doing it here in the podcast booth.

Mary Alessi [00:02:17]:

Right.

Steve Alessi [00:02:17]:

So I want to thank our listeners for your comments and your encouragement.

Mary Alessi [00:02:23]:

Ozzy and Anna Maria are always faithful listeners comments. Every week they binge listen and binge watch. And it means so much to us when we get that feedback and we get a lot of feedback, but thanks to them specifically, they are a big part of the audience.

Steve Alessi [00:02:40]:

Yeah. And please let us know if this is encouraging you and helping you, then let us know. We love hearing from you and you can do that by just sending us messages and we'll put that in the information, the notes there to this particular podcast. But today I want to talk about the season of life that we are in. And I think seasons are important for us to recognize that seasons are a part of life.

Mary Alessi [00:03:10]:

They are.

Steve Alessi [00:03:10]:

Now, I only know season because of sports.

Mary Alessi [00:03:14]:

Right.

Steve Alessi [00:03:14]:

So I know there's football season and there's a start for that season. Then there is an end to that season. There's a start to hunting season, which right now you're going to get all the advertisement on TV from Bass Pro Shops about hunting.

Mary Alessi [00:03:27]:

Sure.

Steve Alessi [00:03:29]:

And then that's going to take us into January and then after that I like it. I can always see on Bass Pro Shops advertisement what the next season is because as soon as January is over, it's about fishing. So they start advertising all of that. But you would know seasons because of what? What do you look at in forms of seasons? Come on, you're decorating right now.

Mary Alessi [00:03:51]:

Oh, the holiday.

Steve Alessi [00:03:52]:

The holiday season.

Mary Alessi [00:03:53]:

You threw me out there. Definitely man. The fall leaves and fall candles, which by the way, I should have remembered that because I ordered some really pretty candles. They're coming to the house today. But honestly, that's probably one of the most exciting things for me when it starts to end. September and fall is coming and we know we're going into Christmas all because of decorating. I love to decorate and our store, our Christmas store at the church that we've had, I think this is our third or fourth year of having a store and it's just so fun.

Steve Alessi [00:04:23]:

Yeah. So just like there are seasons in the natural like that, of course, winter, spring, summer and fall, there are seasons.

Mary Alessi [00:04:35]:

Right.

Steve Alessi [00:04:35]:

There's also seasons to our lives and it's important that we recognize seasons. I think it helps, at least from my perspective. The reason I think I'm able to handle some of the things that I'm called to handle is because I see it in terms of seasons. Even with the building of our organization, I know that a building season is January, February, March and April. Sure, that's trying to put numbers out there, focusing on the outreach, the numbers. But then in May, June, July and August, it's a different kind of season for us. It's more internal growth. We're still growing, but now it's going back and remanaging some of the things that we started and then we hit another growth period from September, October and November.

Mary Alessi [00:05:21]:

Right.

Steve Alessi [00:05:21]:

So then I, of course, know when it comes to December holidays, don't even think about building.

Mary Alessi [00:05:28]:

Right.

Steve Alessi [00:05:29]:

Just enjoy, build relationships with your people.

Mary Alessi [00:05:32]:

Help me build a Christmas tree.

Steve Alessi [00:05:33]:

Help you build a Christmas tree. But also help me focus on building the people that have been a real blessing to us all year long. So those are the holidays. We give them time off and spend time together with them if we can. So I can navigate and juggle some of the seasons of my work by recognizing or at least dealing with the stress from my work by recognizing it's only a season. And it's important to see there are seasons of our lives as well. So there's a single season there's a married season, there's a kids season. You got kids, right? That's a long season, because that season of raising kids, you got them for.

Mary Alessi [00:06:14]:

Like, 18 years, and then it's over.

Steve Alessi [00:06:17]:

But we've entered into a new season over the last few years, and it has been just as rewarding for us as every other season. And that is we are in a season of now taking care of our parents.

Mary Alessi [00:06:36]:

Right? Yeah. It's a sweet season.

Steve Alessi [00:06:39]:

It's a sweet season.

Mary Alessi [00:06:40]:

It's a bittersweet season.

Steve Alessi [00:06:41]:

Yeah.

Mary Alessi [00:06:42]:

It kind of came on us so quickly when your father passed three years ago yesterday.

Steve Alessi [00:06:49]:

Yesterday.

Mary Alessi [00:06:49]:

And I know that is a difficult day, and at the same time, it's a sweet day because he's not suffering anymore.

Steve Alessi [00:06:56]:

No.

Mary Alessi [00:06:56]:

And we get real quality time with your mom, who's one of the most precious people God ever made, and she's doing so good. And to be able to spend that time with her and reminisce and laugh about your dad and just be with her has been really special. But having to embrace that this season is upon us. You don't have any choice. You have to go through it. You don't get to opt out of this season. So we're blessed because both of our moms are doing well physically, emotionally, they're very healthy. They're doing well financially, they're taken care of.

Mary Alessi [00:07:34]:

But they like to have their kids around. Yeah, they like having both of us around. And they're good friends, so that's a blessing. But it's an unusual thing. I don't know about you, but nothing prepares you for it.

Steve Alessi [00:07:48]:

No.

Mary Alessi [00:07:48]:

It's like from one day to the next, you're in it and then you go, why didn't I process this years ago that this would come? Because you can't until you get there and, you know, you're in the season from really one day to the next where you are not just the son or the daughter that can come visit and your mom still heats up your food for you. You're at a season where you're heating up her food.

Steve Alessi [00:08:08]:

Right.

Mary Alessi [00:08:09]:

And you're making sure she's okay every night.

Steve Alessi [00:08:11]:

And you're love that.

Mary Alessi [00:08:14]:

But they need us to do it.

Steve Alessi [00:08:16]:

Yeah.

Mary Alessi [00:08:16]:

And it does shift from they like us to do it, and it annoys us because we're fixing everybody's TVs and taking out everybody's garbage cans to no, this is our reasonable service now. We need to do it for them. And it's bittersweet, but the Lord does prepare you for it. Because even now we're at a season that it's our joy to do that for our mothers.

Steve Alessi [00:08:40]:

Right.

Mary Alessi [00:08:40]:

Because we value them so much, and we know that time is short at this point.

Steve Alessi [00:08:46]:

Right. Well, you said a lot there that we'd like to unpack, because I'm not sure a lot of people even think about it. We're so used to parents taking care of us that we don't always make the shift. Now it's our turn to take care of them.

Mary Alessi [00:09:01]:

Right.

Steve Alessi [00:09:02]:

And we caused our parents some young men listening to this podcast can go back to the days that you caused your parents some real headaches. And now you're at a place where you're looking at them and thinking, you know what? They paid a lot for me. They sacrificed a lot over the years for me. They went through a lot even because of me. Now it's a clean slate, because now they're needing me to be there to now take care of them.

Mary Alessi [00:09:32]:

Right.

Steve Alessi [00:09:33]:

And they're not a burden. I would say our aging parents are not a burden.

Mary Alessi [00:09:39]:

No.

Steve Alessi [00:09:40]:

But in the long run, if we can look at this right. And just be aware that, okay, this is on me, now they really can be the blessing.

Mary Alessi [00:09:49]:

Right.

Steve Alessi [00:09:50]:

Because for your family, we've read statistics first, some statistics about all of this. It's becoming more and more common yes. For people in their fifty s and sixty s to have to take care of their parents that are in their seventy s and their 80s because our older generation are living longer.

Mary Alessi [00:10:11]:

That's right.

Steve Alessi [00:10:12]:

And that's a blessing.

Mary Alessi [00:10:12]:

It's awesome.

Steve Alessi [00:10:13]:

That's a good thing. My grandparents all passed between 50 and 60 years. Yeah, my dad passed 84. Mom's just turned 85 this year, so she and my dad pretty much outlived their parents 20 plus years.

Mary Alessi [00:10:30]:

Right.

Steve Alessi [00:10:30]:

So our parents are living older as they live older. It's proven the strain on our health care system, because now of the medical issues that are being dealt with with an older generation.

Mary Alessi [00:10:47]:

Right.

Steve Alessi [00:10:48]:

And so that's putting certain pressures there on the health care system in our country.

Mary Alessi [00:10:56]:

That's true.

Steve Alessi [00:10:57]:

Some think the answer is, let's put them in an elderly care facility or a senior living facility. And for some, that may be an option. They have to, maybe they're not around and so forth. Then again, some can't be put into a facility like that because of the financial resources that they do not have. And our South Florida community is the Latin culture down here. The Cuban culture does not put your kids or your parents in any kind of home. You're keeping them home with you.

Mary Alessi [00:11:33]:

Right.

Steve Alessi [00:11:34]:

So we see more and more of people that are our age group. Babe, I'm in my 60s, you're in your 50s. That are at that same season with us that's right. That are now caring for their parents. So you mentioned my dad passed away three years ago yesterday. It was October the fourth, 2020, during COVID And so this week we needed to be with my mom right. To be up there. And it wasn't a cry fest.

Steve Alessi [00:12:00]:

It was nothing like that.

Mary Alessi [00:12:02]:

No, at all.

Steve Alessi [00:12:03]:

It was beautiful.

Mary Alessi [00:12:04]:

It was super sweet.

Steve Alessi [00:12:05]:

But we had to intentionalize being there.

Mary Alessi [00:12:08]:

Sure.

Steve Alessi [00:12:09]:

And it wasn't convenient.

Mary Alessi [00:12:10]:

No.

Steve Alessi [00:12:10]:

Because we had just finished about three or four weeks of crazy work that kind of kept us a bit distracted from our nine to five the regular job that we're supposed to do. Yeah, we haven't, but we had to pull back a little bit, work from afar and try to stay in the loop because mom needed us. I needed to be there with her. And you were gracious enough wanting to be able to come up and be a part of all of those three days, four days that we were all together, but I had to do it.

Mary Alessi [00:12:41]:

Well, it's slightly selfish on my part because and I say that tongue in cheek, the truth is our kids are watching us model how you take care of your parents the Godly way and how you honor them. And I think that just becomes the expectation in the news.

Steve Alessi [00:13:02]:

That's a great point. Why don't you hammer down on that right there?

Mary Alessi [00:13:05]:

Well, our parents, we've been very blessed to have Godly parents that raised us up to serve the Lord. And one way that we honor them is by caring for them in every season that is Godly. When we understood the season to separate and to leave the home and cleave to one another. And our parents were both very good about that. And then we've never had between your mom, my mom and your dad, a manipulating, meddling parent. Only my father. But he's in heaven today. I hope he is.

Mary Alessi [00:13:38]:

But we have such Godly examples, and that can't stop with us. We have to make sure that our kids understand the blessing that it is to be able to say, my life will always be there. The busyness, the roller coaster, the job, our bed that we love being in because our backs hurt from moving around so much, all the traveling we've done. And it would have been easier and more understandable for us to have just stayed home and said, she'll be fine, we'll see her later. But to make that additional sacrifice, to say it isn't a sacrifice, it's our reasonable service.

Steve Alessi [00:14:15]:

Right.

Mary Alessi [00:14:16]:

Because she's nobody else's mom but ours.

Steve Alessi [00:14:19]:

Right.

Mary Alessi [00:14:20]:

She is ours. We're not leaving her up to be cared for by anyone else but family members. And there's something that I think is so beautiful to teach that to your children. It's not a burden, it's not an obligation, it's not a pain in the neck. It doesn't put us out. It's priority.

Steve Alessi [00:14:38]:

Right.

Mary Alessi [00:14:39]:

Because we don't know how much more time we have with her. And it's not even to eliminate regret. It eliminates regret. But we don't do that. So we can say, well, we were there. Thank God. I don't want to have any regrets. That's not what motivates us.

Mary Alessi [00:14:54]:

It's the right thing and the honorable thing to be there for the woman that we're here because of her.

Steve Alessi [00:15:02]:

Right. So the point that I was really wanting you to hammer down on is how this is setting an example for your kids.

Mary Alessi [00:15:09]:

Yes, it is, because they learn it's natural for them. It's what mom and dad did. This is what we do. We vacation twice a year. It's what we do. We have a house in Georgia. We go away for the Thanksgiving holidays. That is what we do.

Mary Alessi [00:15:23]:

We have our family traditions, the things that are sacred. This is what our family does. It's a no brainer, and it's not just taught through talking. They are seeing us model it. They're watching us put our mothers first and our schedule second because they matter.

Steve Alessi [00:15:44]:

Right.

Mary Alessi [00:15:45]:

And they're experiencing that, and it will be a natural expectation for them.

Steve Alessi [00:15:50]:

Yeah. Here's a challenge that comes with taking care of older parents, is seeing your moms or your dads not like they once were in your eyes? Oh, yeah, that's a tough thing. It's very hard because here you think of them in their years where you were forming your opinions about life and they said so much, or they did so much that you looked at and you held them in high esteem, in high regard for, wow, that's a certain standard that you have. But then as you get older and you start seeing that they can't remember things, or they say things over and over and over again, they repeat things, or they just don't feel like they have the energy to want to get up and go anymore. That's a challenge for an adult that is trying to care for their aging adults. Because you can't handle seeing your parents no anything less than just on the go and strong.

Mary Alessi [00:16:55]:

The only way you've ever known them is to be so full of life and strong. And that parent, that's the one that is frozen in your mind. Not this one.

Steve Alessi [00:17:05]:

I'm reminded of a couple of trips ago that we took to Israel and your mother, who loves to travel your mom is 81, I believe, and she loves to travel, especially cruise. And she took us on a cruise one summer, and we're like, we're done with this cruise. No more.

Mary Alessi [00:17:24]:

It was not our it was too hot.

Steve Alessi [00:17:26]:

Well, it was a river cruise, and we were like the children compared to all the older cruisers on the ship. But I remember her going to she was supposed to meet us in New York at the airport.

Mary Alessi [00:17:39]:

Oh, my goodness.

Steve Alessi [00:17:40]:

And she got up and what did she do?

Mary Alessi [00:17:43]:

She had Vitamins in one pocket and she had Xanax in the next pocket, and they were old because she'd had them for two years, and so she thought they might be expired, and she wasn't thinking. And as she gets in the car and thank God someone was driving her, she wasn't driving herself when she gets in the car, she reached in to pop the vitamins and she was going to take the Xanax on the plane. Once she got on the plane and she just accidentally popped the two Xanax and did not realize she did it, and then goes to get out of the car and can't even walk into the airport. They weren't expired. We get the phone know, I put her on the plane, and we were so afraid when we got to New York that she would be so asleep, they wouldn't be able to get her off the plane. My sisters were freaking out. We were freaking out. And of course, we teased her royally, but that was several years ago today.

Mary Alessi [00:18:39]:

We wouldn't tease her or anything like that. But back then, I'll never forget, they wheeled her around the corner, and there she was.

Steve Alessi [00:18:46]:

She looked like a zombie head bouncing around.

Mary Alessi [00:18:50]:

Then she got on the flight to Israel and could not go to sleep.

Steve Alessi [00:18:54]:

Oh, Lord. Yeah, but when we see our parents get older and they do things like know, you realize, okay, now tables have really turned.

Mary Alessi [00:19:03]:

Yeah. They're your kids almost.

Steve Alessi [00:19:04]:

Yes. I'm the parent here, and they're not.

Mary Alessi [00:19:07]:

Mom, what are you taking? What is that? Mom, let me see that. Don't put that in your mouth.

Steve Alessi [00:19:14]:

And your mom, you have to definitely keep some chains on. I mean, she's wild. We ended up her having some physical issue hit her body a couple of years ago, and it really came down to this, that she's watching TV, saw this advertisement for a certain kind of vitamin that she wanted. She buys that vitamin, but it had a bad effect on another medication she was taking, and it put her in the hospital.

Mary Alessi [00:19:44]:

Yeah.

Steve Alessi [00:19:45]:

It was crazy.

Mary Alessi [00:19:46]:

Life and death. It almost took her life.

Steve Alessi [00:19:48]:

It was terrible. So some of these things, it's hard for us and our generation to realize, wait, they're really not the parent anymore?

Mary Alessi [00:19:56]:

No. We got to be careful.

Steve Alessi [00:20:00]:

We got to take care of them.

Mary Alessi [00:20:01]:

You bring up a good point, too. In today's society, we have to be careful what we watch and what we buy into and what we click on and what we order through the mail. Because there's so much fraud. How much more do our parents have? To your dad, he was, like, always buying retina, and he just had big old things of retina, and that was, thank God, safe. But to do that and not make your parents feel useless, foolish, stupid, and just talking to them respectfully, mom, listen, don't buy that. All of us, we've all fallen prey to those clickbait things. Because with my mom, if you fought her over it, the more she had to prove she wasn't being conned. We're like, mom, we're all being conned.

Mary Alessi [00:20:49]:

All of us. It's not just age. Don't click on that stuff. But I think that happens in every family. We've all got a story of didn't we get to the farmhouse? What was it your dad ordered? And he ordered so many of them, and we couldn't return them. There was something really big.

Steve Alessi [00:21:04]:

Dad always was a sucker for things. Like, this was an insect repellent that you plug into the wall, and he ended up with, like, 30 of them because he no, that was just one of them. I know you're thinking about another one.

Mary Alessi [00:21:18]:

It'll something bigger. Batteries.

Steve Alessi [00:21:23]:

He got that, and he ends up bringing them all to the house and giving them to me, and I'm supposed to plug them in to all the outlets, and now I can't use the outlets because they're filled with bug, bug repellents, and they never did work. He did that with a pump.

Mary Alessi [00:21:41]:

A pump?

Steve Alessi [00:21:42]:

One of those red pumps that we were going to put outside?

Mary Alessi [00:21:46]:

Yes.

Steve Alessi [00:21:47]:

And he ended up with, like, four of them because he placed an order, and then he clicked again and so on. And these were these big, heavy metal things. He was prone to do that quite a bit. And then you talk about all the lotions oh, man, he bought into if it's going to take away wrinkles. My dad was vain. He loved looking at himself in the mirror. He'd get all those creams on, and then he'd come to the house, hey, I got extra.

Mary Alessi [00:22:14]:

He forced his junk on us.

Steve Alessi [00:22:16]:

He did. He would buy a couple of things for himself and decide that, I'm going to get one for my son Steve.

Mary Alessi [00:22:22]:

Too, or no, Steve will take this.

Steve Alessi [00:22:23]:

Steve will take it.

Mary Alessi [00:22:24]:

But, you know, you did something about a year before he passed. You had no idea that he was going to pass. We didn't know when his last day would be. But I remember you saying, I am not going to talk down to my dad anymore. I'm not going to give him a hard time. I'm just going to let dad be. And if he orders junk, I'm not going to get on him for it and make him feel stupid. I'm just going to let it be and not say anything.

Mary Alessi [00:22:49]:

And I think about that a lot, because it can be very hard for us when we do become the caretakers of our parents, to be worse to them than they ever were to us, because we start talking to them in a way like, mom, don't do that. What are you doing? What are you, crazy? You can't have that. And we shame them and make them really feel bad instead of just honoring and loving. And sometimes they will have young friends or people that do things for them that they like, because those people don't talk to them the way we talk to them.

Steve Alessi [00:23:20]:

My dad and everybody listening to this, if they knew him, they know exactly that they were a part of this program of his or his mindset. He would send everybody these weird texts and these Facebook messages. He was just on that all the time. And I had to finally get to a place where at first, I keep telling dad, don't send that, don't send that. And then finally I said, I'm not going to tell my dad not to send it because he doesn't listen to me anyway.

Mary Alessi [00:23:45]:

Facebook, anyway.

Steve Alessi [00:23:46]:

When people would say something to me, I'd just end up saying, well, that's my dad. That's my dad. And, you know, it's funny. I wish I can get a message.

Mary Alessi [00:23:57]:

An inappropriate one. You'll take whatever you could get.

Steve Alessi [00:24:02]:

That would be that's crazy. Here's the point. We don't realize the precious season of life that we have with our grandparents.

Mary Alessi [00:24:11]:

That's right.

Steve Alessi [00:24:12]:

Or our parents, because when they're gone, they're gone. When it's over, it's over.

Mary Alessi [00:24:16]:

And it's a lot more daunting than you ever, ever think it will be.

Steve Alessi [00:24:19]:

And you know, it. You know, this is a part of life, right? But when it happens, it's just sad.

Mary Alessi [00:24:25]:

It's horrible.

Steve Alessi [00:24:26]:

And you have to try to figure out, okay, hey, I live now without my dad. I live without his voice. I live without hey, I don't have a sounding board anymore about physical ailments. Dad, did you have this pain? Did you have that happen? What was your skin doing? At this age of life, man, you lose a frame of reference. Which is why we should be prepared, every one of us. If we've got aging parents, we step in. We have to stay engaged.

Mary Alessi [00:24:54]:

Right.

Steve Alessi [00:24:55]:

If you have an issue with your parent of something that happened in the past, man, you're the adult now. Let that go. Spend the time with them. You don't want to live with regrets. You're going to miss them as it is, but you don't want to miss them anymore because you weren't spending the time or the energy to be able to go over there and sit down with them and talk to them. And here's know, some don't realize we intentionalize our kids, my mom's grandkids. We intentionalize them spending time with Grandmammy.

Mary Alessi [00:25:26]:

Oh, sure.

Steve Alessi [00:25:27]:

And with Grandma.

Mary Alessi [00:25:28]:

That's right.

Steve Alessi [00:25:29]:

Our two girls are going on a Greece trip.

Mary Alessi [00:25:32]:

That's right.

Steve Alessi [00:25:32]:

With your mom?

Mary Alessi [00:25:33]:

Yep.

Steve Alessi [00:25:33]:

She wants to travel, so she's got a cruise. And she didn't want to cruise alone.

Mary Alessi [00:25:37]:

We asked her not to go alone anymore.

Steve Alessi [00:25:39]:

She won't cruise alone, so she's invited the girls.

Mary Alessi [00:25:41]:

That's right.

Steve Alessi [00:25:42]:

Now, the girls could say, nah to go on a trip like that because.

Mary Alessi [00:25:47]:

It'S another river cruise.

Steve Alessi [00:25:50]:

Don't tell them. Don't tell them that.

Mary Alessi [00:25:51]:

Well, they kind of know.

Steve Alessi [00:25:52]:

They know already. But you know what? There's a lot of kids that wouldn't grandkids. That wouldn't go with the grand.

Mary Alessi [00:25:58]:

Absolutely.

Steve Alessi [00:25:59]:

But we intentionalize. We encourage, we almost force. No, you need to lauren right now is up there with my mom because I couldn't had to get back in the office today, take care of some things, so Lauren stepped in to cover for us so that Grandmammy's not alone this week while she's going through the loss of dad on this anniversary and so forth. We intentionalize it. And thankfully, Mary, because of that, we've got people around us here at our church and in our family friendship circle whenever they see our moms, because they see the way we honor them. They just shower them.

Mary Alessi [00:26:34]:

That's right.

Steve Alessi [00:26:35]:

With honor.

Mary Alessi [00:26:36]:

Yes.

Steve Alessi [00:26:36]:

And the funny thing was, we asked my mom the other day, now that she's no longer living in Miami but living up in Stewart, what do you miss the most? Big tears in her eyes. She said she misses her church.

Mary Alessi [00:26:46]:

She misses us and her church.

Steve Alessi [00:26:47]:

That's right.

Mary Alessi [00:26:49]:

Which is beautiful.

Steve Alessi [00:26:50]:

Yeah.

Mary Alessi [00:26:50]:

She misses all the people that love her so much, shower her with love and respect and make her feel young again and valued again. It's important.

Steve Alessi [00:27:01]:

It is. And they treat your mom the same way.

Mary Alessi [00:27:03]:

Yes, they do.

Steve Alessi [00:27:04]:

They'll always have a place of honor in this church and always have a place of honor in the lives, quite frankly. Frankly, if it wasn't first off, if it wasn't for our two mothers, you and I would have never met each other.

Mary Alessi [00:27:15]:

Oh, no doubt about it.

Steve Alessi [00:27:17]:

Because they were friends before you and I met.

Mary Alessi [00:27:19]:

That's right.

Steve Alessi [00:27:20]:

My mom more or less prayed you in to my life.

Mary Alessi [00:27:24]:

Yeah.

Steve Alessi [00:27:25]:

And your mom went home and told you what a great guy I was because I knew how to wash my own clothes.

Mary Alessi [00:27:30]:

Yeah. She was so impressed.

Steve Alessi [00:27:32]:

Oh, my goodness. Your dad, he didn't set the bar too high, did he?

Mary Alessi [00:27:38]:

Hey. I didn't realize how much I would fall in love with you while I watched you do laundry head over heels.

Steve Alessi [00:27:45]:

Oh, man. But that's a good season. We should embrace it. You got to intentionalize it. You really do. And when you're there, you got to have a ton of patience. Just don't expect things. My sister comes into town to spend time with my mom, and she still has to work.

Steve Alessi [00:28:03]:

And Debbie's on California time, so a lot of her time happens. Her office time starts about 10:00 a.m. Rather than eight or nine on this coast. But she's got to get going because of the time change. And my mom picks up on that.

Mary Alessi [00:28:19]:

Right.

Steve Alessi [00:28:20]:

She doesn't complain. She's just aware of it. That Debbie can't have breakfast with her and coffee late in the morning because Debbie's got to get to work right away. Point there is when you're with your parents, be 100% there because they pick up on the fact that you're not you're on your phone, you're having to do business. You're taking care of things that you still need to take care of. They're watching. They may never say anything, right. But they're watching.

Steve Alessi [00:28:45]:

And what they then start to feel like is that they're a burden.

Mary Alessi [00:28:49]:

Yeah. And you never want and that's hard. That's hard.

Steve Alessi [00:28:51]:

Anyway feel like they're a burden when.

Mary Alessi [00:28:53]:

We'Re still working and we still have responsibilities and expectations. It's a tough season. There's no doubt about it. It's beautiful, but it's not without its challenges.

Steve Alessi [00:29:01]:

There's 100 other places I'd rather be in those moments.

Mary Alessi [00:29:04]:

I know.

Steve Alessi [00:29:05]:

There's people I'd rather be with in.

Mary Alessi [00:29:07]:

Those moments or things we need to get. Done that we legitimately need, but those things will always be there, and they're.

Steve Alessi [00:29:14]:

Thinking pretty much something similar. They're saying, I'm glad my kids here. I sure hope they don't want to have to be here.

Mary Alessi [00:29:22]:

They don't want you to feel forced or obligated.

Steve Alessi [00:29:24]:

They want us to feel present.

Mary Alessi [00:29:26]:

Oh, just like I am seeing that with my own adult children. You don't want to feel like they're obligated to be with you. You want them to want to be with you. We're in that season with grandkids that you see how smart God was and is. Let them have children. And then the need that their parents have to see their own kids will be an easy bridge, because go take the grandkids over to see the grandparents. And it's just a beautiful plan, but I think at the heart of it is it is God's design for us to honor our mother and father. It is his plan that we have to honor them so that our days will be long in the earth.

Steve Alessi [00:30:12]:

And let me say something before we close out here today. I want to thank you because you really do love my mom. It's precious.

Mary Alessi [00:30:19]:

I do.

Steve Alessi [00:30:20]:

If I had to do that all by myself, it would be a real challenge for me. She even tells me, oh, I'm glad you're here, Steve, but I like it when Mary comes, because you're the talker. You carry on the conversation, and that makes the atmosphere fun. And I say that to say, if there's couples listening to us just because it's his mom, don't make it just up to him to go spend time with her.

Mary Alessi [00:30:49]:

Right.

Steve Alessi [00:30:50]:

If it's her parents yes. Don't just send her on a trip to go spend time with her parents.

Mary Alessi [00:30:55]:

That's right.

Steve Alessi [00:30:56]:

Be there together.

Mary Alessi [00:30:57]:

Right.

Steve Alessi [00:30:58]:

Because first, the parents will appreciate it. The older parents will appreciate it, but your spouse will appreciate it 100% for that moral support. Just help that's needed in those environments. So don't just send your other spouse off to go take time with their aging parent. Go with them.

Mary Alessi [00:31:18]:

Yeah, that's good.

Steve Alessi [00:31:19]:

For better, for worse, you're in this thing together to help. But it is a precious season. It's on us. We'll miss them when they're gone. So while they're here, don't miss opportunities to still be with them. Put it on your calendar. Make sure those calls are being made, those texts. Spend time with them.

Steve Alessi [00:31:40]:

All of those are special events for our aging parents because we don't want to leave it up to a system.

Mary Alessi [00:31:45]:

No.

Steve Alessi [00:31:46]:

That's not even biblical.

Mary Alessi [00:31:48]:

No.

Steve Alessi [00:31:48]:

That's on us to take care of the people that took care of us for so very long.

Mary Alessi [00:31:54]:

Amen.

Steve Alessi [00:31:54]:

Anything you want to say before we're done?

Mary Alessi [00:31:56]:

No, I think that's beautiful. It's a beautiful season.

Steve Alessi [00:31:58]:

All righty. Thanks again for joining us on this episode of The Family Business with the Alesses. As we talked about taking care of our aging parent, great season of life. Don't miss it. You've just enjoyed another episode of The Family Business podcast with The Alesses, and we can't thank you enough for being a part of our audience today. Now that you've learned more about us, here's how you can join in in The Family Business. First, make sure you're following our podcast right now and download this episode so you can hear it at any time. Second, think of someone you know that might need or enjoy this episode and share it with them.

Steve Alessi [00:32:34]:

You'll be helping them and helping us to spread the word about the Family Business. Third, go to alessifamilybusiness.com and tap the Askthealesses button. This is really cool. You could use it to record a voicemail, comment or question, and we can add your voice to our conversations. Finally, while you're on our page, tap the Reviews tab and you'll see a link to leave a review on Apple podcasts. We love reading your reviews, and we might even share them on the show. Thanks again for joining us, and we'll see you next time at The Family Business with The Alessis, because family is everybody's business.