How do you tell someone you love to select a few items they want to hold onto because their health has declined to such a degree that they must move?
Can home fit in a shoebox?
Where is home?
I was recently confronted with these questions and the agony of telling my mother that she can no longer live independently.
How do you hold someone’s agency while simultaneously stripping it away?
This isn’t a viral TikTok post or an influencer’s content prompt. And it isn’t meant for outside opinions or even ChatGPT or GROK to answer for me.
Life’s transitions cannot be generated for us. They are hard, complex, and must be handled with care if you truly care about the ones you love.
So much is fake in today’s world that one of the only things I don’t question is time itself: it moves no matter what filter or lens we choose to view it through.
Time doesn’t ask our permission. It doesn’t wait for us to be less busy, in better shape, or financially better prepared, and it certainly doesn’t check our feelings.
Time moves with boxes, both cardboard and coffin, and even if we are fortunate enough to get a heads-up on either, the pain and exhaustion don’t diminish.
And yet, some tender moments remain in the transition.
The honor of stepping up to the plate for someone who has faithfully been both coach and cheerleader.
The peace of knowing that you are doing your best, no matter the tears that come with hard decisions.
The remembering.
Oh, the remembering.
That is a tenderness that both aches and warms.
Those who have gone through the process of moving a parent for their safety and care can speak to the delicate balance of honoring the relationship while acknowledging the circumstances.
And circumstances change, even when respect does not.
Conversations forgotten in a moment by a parent with memory issues.
Details lost between lunches and dinners, naps, and tests.
The frustration of an adult child wanting to move forward while a parent does not want to move.
Who wins?
What is winning?
Who knows?
I don’t.
I don’t.
I don’t.
But I do know that my mother’s safety means moving her, and this comes with a loss for her.
A loss of the proximity of her friends.
A loss of managing her own accounts.
A loss of cooking and cleaning, even if those things were already slipping.
There’s a difference between knowing something is gone and knowing you can still reach for it if you want.
The first involves grieving; the latter, expectation.
Both can bring gratitude if we adapt and lean into what is while honoring what was.
How do you involve gratitude when life feels like it is making decisions for you?
Perhaps the first step is to allow God to lead.
Maybe, in truth, that is the only step.
This column was originally published by CherryRoad Media. For more faith-based columns and inspirational writing by Tiffany Kaye Chartier, follow her on Facebook. Her devotional collection “The 4-Minute Reset: For Cultivating Peace, Purpose, and Positivity” is available on Amazon and other major online retailers.
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