Death and Illness: Dealing With Parents, Dukkha and Old Age

I’m back in California, spending Thanksgiving week with my parents. Because of COVID, I haven’t seen much of them over the last year and a half, which as you can imagine has been difficult. My parents are getting older for one. My father is 82, has Parkinson’s Disease, and is terribly frail now. My mother is younger, and in much better health, but the age is catching up to her as well.

As I sit here in my childhood bedroom, I try and sit with all this. The Buddha often discussed sickness, illness, and death, and how that all inevitably leads to the First Noble Truth: that life is suffering (dukkha). When this is in the abstract, this all seems well and good and noble. But when struck by the realities of illness and old age in front of me, it becomes apparent just how unequipped for the realities of my own aging body. My father, for instance, can barely walk at this point. He isn’t very lucid. Most of the warmth of his personality has been drained. It’s easy to even get mad at this. Get angry at him for changing! I know it’s irrational but a small part of me wants to be angry. But I can be ok with that feeling. It’s just a feeling.

And I try and sit with what is behind that feeling: just a deep well of sadness. Sadness for things passing. Sadness for suffering and death. Sadness for all beings that have to suffer…