Perhaps the toughest gift you’ll buy this season is the one for your aging loved one. It’s likely the gift you’ll wrack your brain over, debating what he might really need and attempting to come up with something he’d never buy for himself but that he’ll really love.
This is the way it worked with my husband’s father. We were always stumped for gift ideas, so we’d usually resort to restaurant gift cards—cards he’d never use unless we were with him so he could buy us dinner. When we did come up with a creative idea, we usually overdid it by buying a gift that was expensive and too complicated—like an ipod with docking station and pre-loaded with playlists of his favorite songs (a gift he never used).
Our gifts to Dad were truly gifts that kept on giving because when he died two years ago, we found a treasure trove of past Christmases tucked away in his closet—unopened DVD players, radios, movies, Tempurpedic slippers, and an envelope jam-packed with gift cards to all his favorite restaurants. We sadly shook our heads as my husband and his two siblings divided up their past gifts.
We have a tendency as adult children to buy useless gifts for our aging loved ones—not because we don’t care about Mom and Dad, but because we care so much. We wish things were easier for them. We wish they could get out, socialize, travel, and experience more, and we want them to be more comfortable at home. So we buy the gifts we think will make their lives better. And because we love them so much, we feel that the amount spent on the gift somehow reflects that love (or compensates for the fact that we have no idea what they really need).
But when it comes to our aging loved ones, the best gifts don’t always cost a fortune. Sometimes simple truly is better. Maybe it’s a nice hand cream for your grandmother or a subscription to Dad’s hometown newspaper (my father-in-law relocated from Swampscott to Florida in the last years of his life but still avidly followed the local news).
Simple truly is sweeter when you’re buying for aging loved ones, and this applies year round. Even if you’re buying Mom a daily necessity—a hand-held shower nozzle or a shower bench—the biggest and “best” versions are often heavy and the hardest to operate.
Perhaps the most used gift we ever gave my father-in-law was the gift of home-cooked meals. We cooked, packaged, and froze single servings of his favorite recipes. He woke up Christmas morning to a freezer filled with meals. This was one of the few gifts we didn’t find sitting unused in his house after he died.
It may sound like a cliché, but quite often, the best gift you can give an aging loved one is the gift of your time: A dinner out together, a show, or just a visit beyond your weekly outing to the grocery store. There’s a commercial going around Facebook that shows an older man year after year at Christmas, getting messages from his children and grandchildren, saying they won’t make it to Christmas this year. After many missed Christmases, they get word he has passed away, so they rush to his home, in tears. They are flabbergasted to find him alive and well waiting inside with a big Christmas dinner. While they are thrilled to find him alive, they are confused why he would fake his own death. “I knew this was the only way you would come,” he tells them.
The gift of time or a visit is the gift many of us rarely give because life is busy or because flights are expensive or because it just makes us sad to see our parents in a different light, but this is sometimes the gift our loved ones most want. And the gift we regret not giving once they are gone. Whatever the gift you decide on—something store-bought, hand-made, or an outing—remember that sometimes it’s OK not to give the very best in retail terms. Sometimes, “best” just means most heartfelt.
Molly Rowe owns FirstLight Home Care with her husband, Steve Rowe, and lives in Swampscott with their two sons. FirstLight provides non-medical in-home care to adults in Swampscott, Marblehead, Nahant, Lynn, Salem, Peabody, Danvers, Beverly, and Lynnfield. For more information and help caring for your loved ones in the comfort of their own homes, please visit FirstLight’s website at www.salem.firstlighthomecare.com or contact Molly at 781-691-5755/[email protected]
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